Obscurantist schools

Yesterday, I watched the documentary Faith School Menace with Richard Dawkins. It troubles me to the point of anger when I see such things. Faith schools is a faith racket allowed and funded by the state. There is no other way to describe a system that have children cut themselves from society, learn the superstition of creationism as if it was factual, learn about life through the narrow ideological frame of religion. Actually, there is a word to label such thing, much stronger than racket: it is obscurantism. Schools should not be the extension of families or subservient to them, it should not mimick the stupidity of some parents, it should on the contrary open children to the world in all its complexity and teach them to become informed, educated citizens.

I have witnessed how faith hijacked even public schools in this country, how it gets the children on their knees, how it keeps them in ignorance (and how it did not even give these kids a religious culture). I will watch more of the series, hoping that the public will too. Willful ignorance is perhaps the greatest threat this generation of children is facing. Let's hope that the great tradition of secular humanism this country has will be stronger in the end.