Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.
Interpretation
Parents may choose faith schools for their academic results, but they recognize that faith itself isn't the reason for those results.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins addresses the trend among parents to choose faith-based education for their children primarily due to the perceived academic superiority of these institutions. He suggests that while the success of these schools is often associated with their religious affiliation, parents understand that the underlying causes of academic performance are likely more complex and connected to various educational practices rather than the faith aspect itself.
In practice
In a discussion about choosing schools, one might refer to this quote to highlight the motivations behind selecting faith schools.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
There's no question that our children's attention and memory is changing when they are reading too long, too much, too early on digital screens.
Teaching sometimes seems like not one profession, but every profession. We ask them to be doctor and diplomat, calf-herder, map-maker, wizard and watchman, electricians of the mind.
Reading is not simply an intellectual pursuit but an emotional and spiritual one. It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that's why it survives
Reading is important. Books are important. Librarians are important. (Also, libraries are not child-care facilities, but sometimes feral children raise themselves among the stacks.)
Once it is recognized that productive thinking in any area of cognition is perceptual thinking, the central function of art in general education will become evident.
All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.