Rob Shorrock

There is a weekly column in the Grantham Journal called 'Thoughtful Moment' written by Father Norton H Collard. These are generally amusing pointless rantings with a soft reactionary quality and occasionally a bizarre opinion or two. Father Collard reminds me sometimes of the Taboo drinking, pulpit banging vicar in the League of Gentleman. A recent column kind of irritated me and I wrote a letter in response, something I privately pledge to myself I wouldn't do. Father Collard was banging on about choice and what this means in Christian tradition. No problem, but it was the concluding paragraph which was quite remarkable.

Father Collard ended with "Presumably, God's choice of the race or the individual should act as a spur to holiness and service. Which means we, too, have to choose: free will means we either accept or reject. We're not very good at accepting, which is why the world is in its present mess." Stunning.

The letter I penned to the Journal for some reason wasn't published so I have included it below:

Father Norton H Collard argues that the profound choice we have as human beings is to accept God, and the world would not be in the mess it is in if more of us were accepting. Nothing could be further from the empirical truth: much of the mess the world is in is as a result of human beings acting on deeply intolerant religious beliefs. Indeed history is drenched in the blood of the victims of this intolerance.

We need to remind ourselves that the monotheistic religions all share the same God. The God of Abraham, who demanded that Abraham slaughter his son to show his devotion; the hideous choice a psychopath might give to his victims. With these antecedents it is not surprising that human history has had to endure the bloody medieval crusades, the Inquisition, pograms in Eastern Europe and more. Remember, the 9\11 terrorists carried out this act of carnage as a result of their complete unthinking devotion to God, and the promise of eternal paradise. How different history would have been if they had chosen another path.  

The real choice and hope for the world is that human beings choose to turn away from superstition and ignorance and embrace human rights, democracy and rationality.

A while since I have been blogging - not totally sure why.

Its snowing and the school's close down. We kind of accept this as normal practice when weather is bad - it's a safety issue, we are not fully staffed etc.

But is this what we have to do? How are the decisions made to shut down schools and what is the criteria that is used? When I was training to be a teacher, one of the schools I was at refused to shut down, whatever the weather was like. It was reported that the Head Teacher felt that the school was a key hub in the community and even if they were not able to offer a proper school day the school would give a safe and warm place for children beacuse some of those children might just be on the streets all day. 

The reasons often given are about safety: cars are skidding on the roads, children slip and fall and sometimes it is impossible for staff to get in.

The government has argued that schools should be hubs in the community offering extended services for children and families from 8 to 6. Schools are finding it difficult to do this, mainly beacuse of resources,  but also I would question if the appetite is really there. If they are to become these communty hubs surely they shouldn't be closing down because of the weather, should they? There were very few day nurseries closed over the last couple of days and they are also offering early education. How did they manage to get over the health and safety worries?

We need to think about how we use schools. The notion that they are run by one Head Teacher is more and more tenous in a modern age of communciation and transition. The idea that they compete with each other for children is odd for a state funded service. It is about time that schools were logically and community federated with an academic head and a community head: a professional leading the teaching staff and a professional leading the community and business side. If we worked on this model, I think schools would have the capacity to bring in and offer a range of community services. I also think they would be less likely to close when it starts to snow.