Richard Dawkins has said he is interested in setting up an atheist “free school” under the Government’s plan to encourage independent education establishments
Yesterday's London Telegraph reports that Britain's Education Secretary Michael Grove says he would be interested in looking at proposals by individuals such as atheist Prof. Richard Dawkins for the creation of a "free thinking" school. Around one-third of the government funded schools in Britain are faith schools. The government has published a plan to give parents' groups, teachers and charities powers to open their own schools at taxpayers' expense. Saying that an atheist school would not be his personal preference, he emphasized that nevertheless it is consistent with the new policy of providing the greatest degree of choice to parents.
I believe this is just wonderful; good for Britain.I have been dreaming for years now of reforming our own education system here in the US. The quality of the education that our children are receiving in the public school system is simply appalling – over half of all the high school grads, can’t even find the state that they live in on a map. And what they are teaching them as science is a joke.
I would like to see a movement towards the creation and establishment of reality based public schools here in the US. They could be modeled after the secular private schools we already have, like Lakeside and others. The staff at lakeside and the staff at the school where our own children attended, all take pride in actually teaching children (it’s simply just a different type of enthusiasm that you see in highly educated and motivated teachers).
