Alan Johnson’s Muddled Meddling: How Not to Increase Social Cohesion

Civitas, 19 October 2006

‘Young minds are free from prejudice and discrimination, so schools are in a unique position to prevent social division. Schools should cross ethnic and religious boundaries, and certainly not increase them, or exacerbate difficulties in sensitive areas.’
Thus argues Education Secretary Alan Johnson, reportedly, in favour of what is widely expected about to become a new government policy for new faith schools that they must set aside up to a quarter of their places for pupils not of that faith, if there is local demand by them for admission.
There are many suppressed premises in his argument .To appraise its soundness, we need first to identify them, and then consider the truth value of all the independent ones.

The first sentence constitutes what logicians call an enthymeme with a suppressed premise that runs something like this: Schools are uniquely well placed to prevent prejudice and discrimination arising in the minds of their pupils.
Seemingly two additional un-stated premises are needed to derive, from their alleged uniquely well situated position to prevent social division, the moral need of schools to cross ethnic and religious boundaries and not reinforce them. The first would run: Agencies of socialisation uniquely well situated to combat social division should do all they can to. The second would be: Schools that do not cross ethnic and religious barriers are not doing all they can to combat social division.
Now for the appraisal of Johnson’s argument. Are all its independent premises true?
The first is: Young minds are free from prejudice and discrimination.
Let us grant that there is a time very early on in the life of each child when they are.
The second premise is: Schools are uniquely well-placed to prevent prejudice and discrimination from arising in the minds of their pupils.
This premise can be contested. It is doubtful whether schools are better able than the families of children to prevent them acquiring prejudices. Granted, if a child’s parents and siblings are not free from prejudice, then schools are the agency of socialisation best able to combat such prejudices as the child is liable to acquire from them. We may also grant something entirely different which seems to be what really lies behind the government’s proposed new requirement for faith schools. This is that bigoted schools can instil their bigotry in those of their puplis whose families, not being free of it themselves, have not immunised them from acquiring the prejudices taught at and cultivated by their schools.
But that is a separate matter. We can suppose that this is in fact what is really behind the government’s proposed new policy. It wants to combat the baneful influence bigoted parents have on their children and the even more baneful influence bigoted schools can have on their pupils whose parents, by not being free of it themselves, have not immunised their children from acquiring prejudice at bigoted schools they may attend.
The third and final independent premise runs: Agencies of socialisation uniquely well situated to combat social division should do all they can to.
This is un-contentious and must be granted.
The final premise Johnson’s argument needs to yield its desired conclusion is: Schools that do not cross ethnic and religious barriers are not doing all they can to combat social division.
This crucial, un-argued for, and, indeed, un-stated premise is simply false. There is no warrant for supposing faith schools are not as able as, or even more able than, community schools are at combating such prejudices as their pupils might otherwise be in danger of acquiring at home. Everything depends here on how open-minded and free of prejudice particular varieties of faith school are. No one, including Johnson, would be seriously entertaining his proposal today were it not for concern about the lack of integration of Muslims in British society, and the belief that the state needs to be more-pro-active than to date in seeking to undermine the self-segregation of some Muslim communities in Britain today that makes their young men become such willing recruits to Al Qaeda.
Assuming that is the real cause of concern about faith schools, then the way for the state to tackle the problem is head-on, not by forcing all of them to accept quotas of children of other faiths which risk denying children of some faith opportunity to attend a school of that faith.
I can foresee the government’s new requirement for faith schools having exactly the opposite of its intended effect, as children from non-bigoted families adhering to some some faith whose schools are as equally unbigoted, are deneid admission to these faith schools because of a requirement that they admit a certain proportion of children of other faiths not all of whose families are free from forms of bigotry that have rubbed off on these children and which the schools they attend may not be able to ride them of, no matter how unbigoted they are and hard they try.
A far better remedy for the current problem facing the country would be for the state to withhold voluntary aided status from all faith schools unable to demonstrate to it their total commitment to providing a non-bigoted form of education, as well as for the state to do all in its power otherwise to combat the self-segregation of Muslims enclaves. There are lots of other, as yet unexplored and untried, options. Other non-bigoted faith groups should not be sacrificed in the cause of national security and public safety unless as a last resort. This is a point the country is as yet far from having reached.