UK - price of Christian Academies?

Is this the price of Christian Academies?


Following is reprinted from a recent letter to a major newspaper.
There's good and bad - a lot of bad which is why we should all join in
condemnation of the new "reforms" Blair wants

==================
By Sara McKinnon

Parents thinking of sending kids to a school like the Thorne academy
would be attracted by the strong results and excellent discipline they
have.

I was one of the first children in the country to go to a city
technology college, run by the Vardy foundation, in Gateshead and I
have

to admit that I did really well out of it, passing 13 GCSEs, three A
levels, and going on to study in a top university.

The rumours of toilets being locked and kids soiling themselves at the
Doncaster school come as no surprise. That was a scheme introduced
while

I was at school, so we couldn't waste time.

They were only open at lunchtimes; other than that, you had to find a
housekeeper; people hired just to patrol the corridors.

They also removed all the mirrors from the toilets, apart from the
sixth

form toilets, as they said girls were wasting their time looking in
them.

Bearing in mind you could get a detention for a bit of your fringe
falling over your face, it's no surprise we were all in there,
desperately making sure our hair was out of our eyes.

One of the regular guests at our assemblies was a preacher who would
promote extreme views, telling us that homosexuals were going to burn
in

hell, as would single parents. Naturally this upset the large numbers
of

students who were from 'broken' homes.

One term, during year ten, we were taken out of GCSE classes to attend
a

course named Stones and Bones. There we learned that evolutionary
theory

was absolutely wrong and there aren't dinosaurs today because they
weren't very good swimmers so when the flood came and Noah wouldn't let

them on the boat, they had had it.

Some children will do very well at the school, but as the board of
governors operates outside of the control of the council, don't expect
any justice if you feel you child has been treated unfairly.

I did well, but it was because of some great individual teachers. The
way the school was run made me want to rebel constantly, not because
I'm

that type but because it was so strict on petty things that it got to
you after a while.

To get the best out of it, a child must learn to only go to the toilet
once a day, to obey rules without question, to keep opinions to
themselves, and to stick to the letter of the uniform policy. That's
some fairly harsh lessons for a young child to learn - it is really a
business, and its business is producing wage slaves.

.

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