IN your 'Opinion' column (May 8), you expressed the desire "to secularise all state-aided non-church schools." This is often advocated as a religiously neutral stance. However, to make schools "God-free zones" is hardly neutral; it is not God-neutral, but God-hostile.

Having thus secularised schools, you then expressed the desire that they "impart moral values ... on secular lines."

"Secular morality" seems often to be little more than large sections of Christian morality with God left out. It is like building a house without foundations, with collapse as the obvious outcome. As the "after-glow" of Christian values fades, we see that the "values" that are left often amount to little more than "me and mine and the devil take the rest." A sense of social responsibility and service, let alone self-sacrifice, rapidly bites the dust.

The desire of so many parents, many of whom are not regular church-goers, to send their children to church schools shows that many parents recognise where solid values are to be found.

Moreover, parents who follow non-Christian religions often prefer a church school so that their children are not educated in a Godless and value-free environment.

REV JOHN CORBYN, St Gabriel's Vicarage, Pleckgate Road, Blackburn.

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