Why have I never taught a Jewish child?

Teaching British Values is now compulsory in our schools and we are drawing in on ourselves, into Little Britain, because of a fear of the actions of a tiny, tiny minority of so-called radicalised British Muslim youth.

As we clamour for restrictions on immigration, alongside a liberal’s fear of talking about race, we label some communities as dangerous and not very British. Fear of Islam is irrational but encouraging Muslims to retreat as some sort of alien breed is counter to our democracy and the values we claim as our national identity. And it alienates Muslims.

Faith schools are marching towards segregation and the creation and strengthening of racial barriers between communities. The government adores free schools and plans to open another 500, many of them single faith schools.

In 2014 there were 6,848 state funded faith schools – about a third of the total and around a 3% increase in the last decade. Jewish and Muslim faith schools, a tiny minority of these, increased from 37 to 48 and from 7 to 18 respectively over the last 7 years. 1.8 million students are in faith schools. (House of Commons Library 08-09-2014)Most of these are Catholic or Church of England primary schools.

In 36 years in multi-cultural East London schools and a largely mono-cultural Hertfordshire town I have taught around 7,000 children aged 11-18. I have known many churchgoing Christian children, active Catholics, practising Hindus and Sikhs. Muslims studied alongside other faiths and we had small numbers of Baptists, Buddhists and at least 8 Jehovah Witnesses. But never a Jewish child.

I spoke to a London headteacher about the number of Jewish children in his 1000 strong school. The school had many Jewish children until the opening of a nearby Jewish Free School at which point all Jewish children left. If we segregate children by religion are we surprised they become segregated socially and that elements of separatism will pervade?
As more Jewish kids are taken into faith schools and fewer are taught alongside non Jews should we be surprised that the horror of anti Semitism is prospering in Britain, with more attacks in 2014 than for decades?

There is a video of the Muslim IQRA Primary School in Slough which starts with a boy doing morning prayers in Arabic with the other assembled children. This faith school was created because, “the community wanted it.” The allocation of community status is an interesting one: is there just one Muslim community; just one English community? Despite support for our school’s planning application people living within 100 metres of the school have designated themselves “the community.” And really did expect their views to take prominence. It seems we can all claim community support if we narrow our constituency sufficiently. In theory, non Muslims could attend the IQRA school but they don’t. My understanding is that at least some Muslim schools ban stringed instruments, singing, dancing and figurative art because they conflict with the teachings of the Koran which suggests they can lead to sexual arousal and idolatry.

The Catholic Church has refused to open further academies until the government changes its policy on a 50% cap on the control of admissions. This cap on single faith control of admissions upset Jewish community leaders, too, but the government says that, “new faith schools established with taxpayers money in areas where there is a shortage of good places will be available to all who need them.” (Telegraph 15-11-2013)Why wouldn’t faith schools, all built upon such positive principles want to attract others to their moral outlook?

I worry about the curriculum in all schools, with the drive in reverse gear to the artless, toneless mind-numbing rote learning, speed writing and endless test-practising menu. However, what do faith schools teach? I was taught the Catholic view of many things, which included virgin birth, resurrection and the chastity of priests. I was 18 before I dared tempt hellfire by entering a non Catholic place of worship.

In July 2013, a state-funded orthodox Jewish girls' school in north London was admonished after it was discovered that students had their GCSE exams censored, with questions about evolution deliberately blacked out of science papers. The OCR examinations board found that 52 papers in two GCSE science exams sat by pupils at Yesodey Hatorah Senior girls' school in Hackney had questions on evolution obscured, making them impossible to be answered.

When we separate from others we allow gossip, exaggeration and ignorance to take hold, playing into the hands of those who want to divide people. David Green, chief executive of the think-tank Civitas, said, ‘Some Muslim schools in Britain have become part of a battleground for the heart and soul of Islam. Their aim is to turn children away, not only from Western influence, but also from liberal and secular Muslims.’Mr Green says that children in some of the Islamic schools are not being prepared to live in a free and democratic British society. Indeed, they are being made to despise our culture. (Daily Mail 1-10-2013)

It is wrong to go down the Daily Mail’s one school does it so they all do route in condemning the new government sponsored free school, Islamic Al-Madinah school in Derby. Here, allegedly, girls have to sit at the back of classrooms, boys and girls are segregated at meal times and there is a strict dress code even for non Muslim staff. Sensibly, Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, declared: ‘We are not living in rural Pakistan or a Taliban-run region of Afghanistan. Such superstitious, divisive nonsense should have no place in a British school.’ Whose voice will be considered typical?

We don’t know what goes on in religiously separated schools so I guess we have to believe the Mail when they add, using anonymous sources, “Growing Government worries over what is being taught in the quickly rising number of private and publicly-funded Islamic schools has led to reports that the home intelligence service, MI5, is to send in undercover agents posing as teachers to check if children are being brainwashed in Islamic radicalism.” By ‘eck.

Might the reality be that some or most faith schools develop thoughtful, tolerant, responsible and caring young citizens as Ofsted reported on the JFS (Jewish Free School). Their, “religious outlook is orthodox, and one of its main aims is “to ensure that Jewish values permeate the school”. Jewish Studies is a core subject for all students all of whom take the GCSE examination in Religious Studies. Ivrit and Israel Studies are included as part of Jewish Education. (http://www.findajewishschool.co.uk/jewish-secondary-schools/jfs-school.php#)

King Solomon High School in Ilford also highlights the importance of Israel, wanting to teach “a positive and proud sense of Jewish identity built upon a sound knowledge of Jewish practice and observance and an appreciation of the centrality of Israel in Jewish life”.
(http://www.findajewishschool.co.uk/jewish-secondary-schools/king-solomon-high-school.php#sthash.ghFJWwDZ.dpuf)

I do worry when I see so many children waving the flag of Israel on a school website; we might all be expected to worry if Muslims were pictured with the Saudi flag enthusiastically paraded. We worry anyway if the English flag is given prominence.

We should live, work and study side by side in mutual respect of different traditions and cultures. We should celebrate and proclaim the characteristics that can bring us together. Let’s promote acceptance of others, both within the school community and in the wider world, incorporating values such as caring, kindness and charity. Study together in secular schools for a better world.

Dennis O'Sullivan

I Am All For Extremism In Schools

Posted Wednesday 10th June 2014



I am all for extremism in schools

I am an extremist, I have extreme views on the education of our children and I impose my extreme beliefs on 1025 children I have systematically removed staff who do not share my extreme practices and I have insisted that all governors, recruited over the last 15 years , embrace fanaticism.

I have tried everything I currently know to extend my agenda into other schools and I am a member of organisations committed to the same revolutionary vision.

I'm looking for a whole herd of Trojan horses, skilled letter writers, spoof columnists and revolutionary cadres to spread the takeover.

Or as Bobby Dylan said, "I'm liberal but to a degree, I want everyone to be free."

The context for my confessions is the “Trojan Horse” scandal to hit 21 Birmingham schools. In March, an anonymous letter was made public which claimed to be a template illustrating how state schools could be taken over and pushed into adopting a more Islamic culture. The unsigned letter could be a provocative hoax - refers to "Operation Trojan Horse" as the name of the alleged conspiracy.

At a time of anti-foreigner sentiment spreading throughout our political parties this was a heaven-sent opportunity to scare us all about muslims. Into Birmingham went four investigation teams, including experts on terrorism, for God’s sake!

Schools that were judged good or outstanding by recent Ofsted inspectors are now labeled by Ofsted as inadequate. I’m not sure I can see much evidence, that’s evidence, of extremism but I do know that the judgments on the mainly muslim state schools have been made on criteria my colleagues and I, in mainly white state schools, have never heard of. And I have endured 7 such inspections.

The Birmingham schools reject the findings as “scaremongering and an unfair misrepresentation,” calling the whole investigation "a vicious and co-ordinated smear campaign.” Much has been made of a muslim woman’s failure to shake hands with an Ofsted Inspector. This was interpreted as a cultural thing rather than most teachers’ sensible approach to Ofsted.

However, with an education system unmonitored and split asunder to satisfy an ideological obsession there are bound to be opportunities for all kinds of nutters and if you let all kinds of people run their own schools you will get extremism, almost by definition.

Many people of all ethnicities are united by their opposition to homosexuality. Our great British values were upheld in law between 1987 and 2003 with the infamous Section 28 banning teachers from suggesting, “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”

I find it hard to embrace the Old Testament punishment for adultery

“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”(Leviticus 20:10)

And I am very pleased that Mosaic Law was replaced when Jesus came along to preach love and forgiveness rather than stoning. John 8:7 recounts a woman accused of adultery being brought before Christ, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Adulterous wives have been roundly condemned. Among the often severe Aztecs they were sometimes impaled. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks favoured amputation of the nose whilst the legal code of Mesopotamia , around 4000 years ago, provided drowning as a punishment. This was as much to do with husbands’ rights of ownership as sin, of course, and the Mormon religion encouraged men to be polygamous, though not women. For failing to worship her husband in the Manu tradition of Ancient India “the king shall cause her to be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many.”

I think what I am trying to show is that societies can have some laws and punishments we now consider abhorrent, but they can and will change in a liberal society. They remain abhorrent. There are no static context free British values and I understand that values evolve with the maturity of a society. There is no place for Sharia Law in Britain but we need to respect British muslims into society, not ostracise, isolate, label and condemn them.

 In 2011, about one third of the 20,000 state funded schools in England were faith schools, approximately 7,000 in total, of which 68% were Church of England schools and 30% were Roman Catholic. There were 42 Jewish, 12 Muslim, 3 Sikh and 1 Hindu faith schools.

Are we really surprised that Muslims do some Islam related teaching, that their ethos may be a bit different to the going-to-mass-in-school-time Catholic faith schools? Do boys in Jewish faith schools wear the kippah, Sikhs turbans and Muslim girls the niqab? Surely the refusal to insist on secular state schools means we tolerate faith schools praising and proclaiming their own religion just a bit. Do we doubt that the Methodists, Greek Orthodox and United Reformed Church who all have state funding for their schools, sometimes go on a bit about what they consider the best bits of their faiths? Allow and encourage faith schools and we must accept that elements of separatism will pervade. The Quaker school might mention pacifism when talking of war, much to the distaste of those who glorify British wars. And as for the new Hindu Free school with a ban on sausages…

 If we segregate children by religion are we surprised they become segregated socially? Our school cook, Tina, said it better than me: “If you want a multicultural society our kids have got to grow up together.”
Why would an inclusive society want to separate our children from each other on religious grounds. There’s a nice little model of how this could work in Northern Ireland.

 98% of our state funded faith schools may refer to those tablets God gave to Moses. The 10 Commandments insist: Keep the sabbath holy, Do not covet thy neighbour’s wife, oxen or his other property. And I was brought up not to question the Holy Trinity the Virgin Birth the Ascension of Mary into heaven, The Resurrection, transubstantiation, Heaven and Hell, mortal sin and the infallibility of the Pope. Well…

Long ago
I was a 9 year old debutant altar server at Our Lady’s House in Willesden and at something near to 5.00 a.m the fallen women were already at work. I remember them as worn, timid and withdrawn young women very drably dressed scrubbing the floor. Many of you will be familiar with the recent films and fuss about the dire and inhumane treatment of women in the Magdalen’s Laundries throughout Ireland. Approximately 10,000 women are known to have entered a Magdalen Laundry from 1922 until the closure of the last laundry in 1996.

The homes cared for unwed mothers and other young women considered to be wayward. They endured a daily regimen that included long periods of prayer and enforced silence. Women were imprisoned in these institutions and kept from the embarrassed holy eyes of a catholic nation.

The vengeful Catholic Church would take their children from them.

On Wednesday 5th of June 2014 news broke of the discovery of the bodies of 796 children from one of these schools for the children of fallen women in Tuam, County Galway, my own mother’s homeland.

The children in these schools/homes were 5 times more likely to die as other children, undernourished and cruelly abused and neglected as the sins of the mothers were visited on innocent children. 796 very small skeletons of children who died in the home were found in a septic tank The Catholic Church buried these children by throwing them into a cesspit. I wonder if they recited Luke 18:16 “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God, “as they disposed of their bodies like worthless garbage.

The Bishop of Tuam says you can't impose the morality of 2014 Britain on 20th century Ireland. You can't judge people for previous behaviours. I guess the 1960s were a different time and we should let Jimmy Saville and the other paedophiles rest in peace. And let’s not go using our 21st century ideals to go on about the Holocaust.

My family were catholic. It was their job and their church’s job to teach me about being catholic. Parents have a right in the European Convention of Human Rights to bring up their children in the religion of their choice. However, they do not have a right to state funding for religious schools. I have nothing against what I know of the Hindu religion, and Muslims, Sikhs, the numerous Christian varieties, Jews and Anabaptists should all be free to worship as their religion and secular law dictate. But I am against all faith schools.

Let all schools educate about the similarities between religions, the fact that there are different views of religion. A little thought to town planning, to mixed housing provision to help create communities of people of all colours, who consider themselves British and who can celebrate their faith, or none, in a fair society based on good old British values: equality of opportunity, meritocracy, fair play and doing the right thing.

However, I don’t want to come across too democratic or liberal. Neither I nor my daughter, Scarlett, slept peacefully on hearing the Mass Grave in Galway story, sadness and anger ruining the night.

I hear that a priest wants to pray over the septic tank.

For whom shall we pray, who to bless and who to condemn? Upon whom should we wish eternal hellfire, to rot in hell - the nuns and priests, bishops and popes or the children they termed bastards?



Dennis O'Sullivan

To parliamentarians on the occasion of Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday: A Pox on Both your houses.

April 26th 2014

I have to give you bad news today and it is an unsweetened pill.  You will know that Mr Gove (an early blog appearance as usual)is very, very opposed to students taking their exam qualifications before the age of 16. He is likewise against what he calls “gaming” when schools enter children more than once for an exam or resit to get a better mark. Ofqual admit to “several thousand” mark changes on appeal but we are to be stopped appealing.  So he has announced that schools will be barred and penalized for such wrongdoings. Bravo, Brave Gove, to stand up and tell off the private schools, who have been gaming forever, with such unequivocal bluntness is worthy of admiration, adulation and a new job. Or can it be that these new rules are going to apply only to the public sector, can it? That would be obscenely beneath the “all in it together” mantra our prime Minister declares. When aliens took the life form of Michael Gove, the 21^st century bogeyman getting away scott free with destroying our schools they avoided both glamour and shame.
The identikit Tory-Labour parties have ignored the electorate, effectively promoting the nauseating, dangerously divisive UKIP offering answers to voters real concerns – wrong answers, ill thought out and contradictory answers but nonetheless populist nasty stuff which appeals to people losing hope as their standards of living continue to decline.

I was recently asked to write something for a magazine and they are publishing the blog-type ranting leaving me to find an alternative to the quiet piece which ended quite hopefully:

“..the terrible beauty of learning, the textures and belief in teaching, the joy and delight in achievement… transcending baffled incredulity and wounded self-belief. Lotta continua, Mickey, that struggle continues.”

I explained last month how Gove became Mickey and I also mentioned Ukrainian blog readers. Well, Mickey hasn’t bothered replying but 30 Ukranians read my stuff one day last week. Worryingly for Farage they mainly hit upon “How to choose a secondary school,” so maybe they have plans to visit. If I really want to wind up the bucolic UKIP –there’s been 83 blogs read in Poland, 219 in Germany and, please explode Nigel, 139 in France. What if all these literate discerning adults descended on us with their fancy skills and bilingualism?

Our symbol of democracy, The House of Commons united in eloquent opposition to the abuse of one of its members. Apparently, Christian Torres (Chelsea South) had not claimed expenses for the bus ride to his constituency party's fete. The ever so thorough MPs’ committee for looking into MPs’ expenses regretted that his claim was two years out of date. “It was an innocent mistake,” he chimed, “and now I am being victimised. That I overlooked the rules should not penalise me… I forgot to claim the £2.20… I was only on the dammed bus as part of a publicity stunt… and even though my mum paid the fare I want the money… and I don't get paid enough…. and bigger boys made me do it, one of whom may have been my partner but I was afraid to mention that, so I want to claim his fare too. Anyway, when did we start having to submit genuine, timely expenses claims?”

Fancifully creative writing, of course.That didn’t really happen; the next lot did.

Culture Secretary, Maria Miller with a trifling expenses difficulty, was ordered to repay £45,000 by the Commons Watchdog. The MPs own committee reduced her repayment to £5,800. Having obstructed the investigation she was ordered to apologise and did so with a teenage petulant 32 seconds of the tiniest, most begrudging,“ I’ve been told to apologise.” Her fellow MPs hurried to her side whilst she spoke. Yes, they said, “Were certainly in this together!”

Prime Minister Cameron has gone all religious (vote for him wont you) and declared us a Christian country as he spouted beliefs and values based on god stuff, admitting he is a somewhat occasional Christian. Every man needs a creed at election time.

There’s something fishy going on in Birmingham. It may be a big fat hoax of a letter left lying around in an editor’s intray or a real attempt by some Muslims to take over the management, curriculum and pastoral care in some schools.

There are at least three enquiries being done in Birmingham today and Gove (really having a laugh) has set his own underway, naturally led by a supremely unqualified guy, Peter Clarke, fresh from running the counter terrorism unit at Scotland Yard. Google the investigation and The Telegraph have it under “terrorism.” May I offer a “for God’s sake!” here as Gove equates Muslims with terrorism.

I was a victim in  catholic schools where we went to benediction  and mass in  school time; we mimed hymns in assembly, were taught that we would go to hell if we attended another faith’s ceremonies, whilst priests and nuns beat us with equanimity. It’s dead easy to be a Catholic school headteacher as the talent pool is restricted to those who can produce a priest’s certificate of attendance. Herabouts you also have to take pledges like “veritas” and “caring for all children” with a pinch of salt.

 Sikhs, Jews and Hindus have their own schools proposing their own way out of reality and Church of England schools contain more kids than churchgoers. Isn’t it all right for religious groupings to run their own schools, with divisive admissions policies, prayers and interesting curriculum bias financed by the state? If Muslims are doing so is it really any of Gove’s business?

Gove recently allocated funds for five free schools, obviously free from terrorist associations. They are Jewish free schools: Etz Chaim (Mill Hill) Eden (Muswell Hill) Rimon (Golders Green) South London Jewish(Wimbledon) and Alma (Finchley)all recently generously state-funded.

“Faith schools make a fantastic contribution to our education system and none more so than Jewish faith school,” Education secretary Michael Gove said in December 2010.

I’m going to believe in pixies and leprechauns, rainbows and pots of gold supplied by Mr Gove to those he chooses.

 I am so liberal that I have nothing religious against Jewish schools and accept that there is probably a Jewish flavour to the ethos, where Jewish governors are possibly a majority and they espouse a Jewish way of life. Nothing against Jewish schools at all. I’m just against all religion inspired schools and in favour of a “we’re all in it together” secular education system.

So Muslims up to no good in schools? Must be a terrorist issue or is it just a good old fashioned anti-foreigner alternative to UKIP in next month’s election?
To sink so low name-checking Christianity. Can we have blokes on horses crusading in the name of St George. George by the way, ironically, never set foot in England, good Turkish lad that he was.

When the deputy speaker gets cleared of serious sexual charges politicians united to bleat about "high profile people” being protected from such prosecutions, giving anonymity in trials to "people like him." All 3 parties moved to bully the CPS, protecting each other from the deserving consequences of their own venal stupidity, dishonesty and complicity. Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans’ confessed drunken bloke’s groping behaviour is apparently common in the House.

40% of House of Commons employees claim they have been sexually harassed at work. Imagine the fuss if it was a teacher drunkenly groping the people around them at work?

 UKIP leader Nigel Farage proclaims his politics as a break from the corruption of British politics. But here’s an oddity. Mr Farage is incessantly against foreign workers coming to the UK to take jobs that can be done by britishers. He employs a German as his secretary, OK, he says, because she’s his wife and just one of the “26 million European workers” coming to Britain in UKIP publicity.
Farage is against the EU parliament wasting money on expenses. The £60,000 he can't account for was not expenses it was an allowance and how dare we ask how he spent it. That’s almost like the rabidly anti EU and virtually everything else, Dail Mail editor Paul Dacre taking EU grants of 300,408 euros for his Scottish estate.

You may think that I am creating a stereotype, partying in urban myths. Stereotypes are sometimes thick ugly plaster over a framework of truth and our leaders really are a dodgy bunch of opportunists.

This week David Laws announced that its time to stop changing everything in education, lets settle down. If you vote us back in we will stop meddling. Could Lib Dem Laws be trusted, after all he is in the government, he is working with Gove in the DfE. Listen Honest David, I'm not the only one who's been taking notes: remember you got kicked out for a £50,000 illegal expenses claim.

Let’s trust our betters and breed a generation of the silently insulted. There is some perverted poetry that it is Mrs Fox who is leading Gove’s unrelenting hunting down of accessible qualifications. so that most students fail. And when our kids realise that the point is to stifle their ambition and aspirations I am sure they will sit quietly in rows. The rule changes on vocational courses are backdated to affect kids who started the courses 9 months ago, cos really, who cares? Not the disgracefully clueless silent Labour Party that’s for sure.

Just now I read that Gove has cancelled his speech at a headteachers’ union’s conference. He’s too busy. My own union leader asks me to believe that the government is listening. I admire your perseverance, Brian, but  you’re wrong.

Gove, Laws, Truss, Hunt and all you parliamentary abusers you don't know what you're doing. The exam-practising stress on our kids is growing – 9 two hour science exams in 2016 will be more than for a final university degree.  And just how much bloody Maths do you want them to do? What’s wrong with childhood and childish things, of a bit of creativity?  Don’t they have the right to be a 16 year old average ability kid working hard, doing well and getting recognition for that?

And the adults in education, if they’re  Maths or English teachers or headteachers in non selective schools will pack it in or get shafted. Gove has declared a 9 point scale for his new tougher GCSEs;. Well, Mickey, my anger at your machinations goes up to 11.

So my homework is for schools, its teachers, parents and leaders who know our students and families and understand our own communities to set the education agenda. 1.3 million school employees plus just under 10 million parents should swing any election, so

Seize the time.

Shout at politicians.

Shout loudly.

Dennis O'Sullivan