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Trust in God, but play by the school game ‘rules’
• HAVING read Rev Stephen Coles’ comments in your newspaper (White, middle-class parents find God, and a school place, August 10), I feel compelled to confess my sins.
I am white and middle-class, and after a lifetime of debauchery and self-indulgence, I rediscovered my lost faith at around the time that my eldest child reached the age of three. What made our situation rather unusual was that my wife is an Asian Muslim, and my children have Muslim names.
When we started going to church, we were warmly received. The church was packed with young families, and we soon made many good friends there. At the same time, I felt slightly ill at ease, as if we were there under false pretences. We would take our children to the crèche, and make sure that their names were recorded in the register. My personal epiphany came on a summer’s morning, during the holiday period. There was no crèche, no register, and the church was virtually empty.
Therefore, to some extent, I am in agreement with Rev Coles. However, the simple truth is that we parents are simply playing by the rules that have been laid down for us. If the churches want their schools to be more diverse, they should amend their criteria to allow this to happen.
What is more, the local churches are equally complicit. They hold up the promise of a coveted school place; and in return, we bolster their dwindling congregations. In the absence of these children, I doubt that the combined congregation of the three CofE feeder churches could fill one small church hall. Bums on seats increase funding from the diocese, and it would be disingenuous of Rev Coles to suggest that he does not benefit from this tacit arrangement.
While I can only speak of St John’s, there does seem to me to be another more serious problem. The school, inevitably perhaps, is so full of white middle-class children that it struggles to cope with anyone who does not fit into this category. Our own son was so unhappy there that we eventually withdrew him.
Divine retribution, perhaps, but at least he is now flourishing in a school that welcomes and embraces his ethnicity. Any school should be capable of fostering the uniqueness that is within every child, regardless of their class or colour.
Before criticising the parents, Rev Coles should perhaps ask himself why so many non-white and underprivileged children feel so alienated at church schools.
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
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