richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

C H I L D H O O D , ABUSE AND R E L I G I O N 331
own free will. Amish children never volunteered to be Amish; they
were born into it and they had no choice.
There is something breathtakingly condescending, as well as
inhumane, about the sacrificing of anyone, especially children, on
the altar of 'diversity' and the virtue of preserving a variety of
religious traditions. The rest of us are happy with our cars and
computers, our vaccines and antibiotics. But you quaint little
people with your bonnets and breeches, your horse buggies, your
archaic dialect and your earth-closet privies, you enrich our lives.
Of course you must be allowed to trap your children with you in
your seventeenth-century time warp, otherwise something irretrievable
would be lost to us: a part of the wonderful diversity of human
culture. A small part of me can see something in this. But the larger
part is made to feel very queasy indeed.
AN EDUCATIONAL SCANDAL
The Prime Minister of my country, Tony Blair, invoked 'diversity'
when challenged in the House of Commons by Jenny Tonge MP to
justify government subsidy of a school in the north-east of England
that (almost uniquely in Britain) teaches literal biblical creationism.
Mr Blair replied that it would be unfortunate if concerns about that
issue were to interfere with our getting 'as diverse a school system
as we properly can'. 143 The school in question, Emmanuel College
in Gateshead, is one of the 'city academies' set up in a proud
initiative of the Blair government. Rich benefactors are encouraged
to put up a relatively small sum of money (£2 million in the case of
Emmanuel), which buys a much larger sum of government money
(£20 million for the school, plus running costs and salaries in
perpetuity), and also buys the benefactor the right to control the ethos
of the school, the appointment of a majority of the school governors,
the policy for exclusion or inclusion of pupils, and much else.
Emmanuel's 10 per cent benefactor is Sir Peter Vardy, a wealthy
car "salesman with a creditable desire to give today's children the
education he wishes he had had, and a less creditable desire to
imprint his personal religious convictions upon them.* Vardy has
* H. L. Mencken was prophetic when he wrote: 'Deep within the heart of every
evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.'