Steve Shaw, having lost his cool (how unusual), says:

There is simply no telling you that faith schools are unfair in principle, both to its pupils and to those outside who have to put up with the secular state schools depleted of good pupils as a result.

...and I can't help but wonder how these Christian and Muslim Arab students would fare in Israeli public schools.

The atheist ideology that you claim not to espouse, dictates that religious education is harmful for children - apparently because it violates your "principle."

In the United States, Catholic and Episcopalian and Lutheran schools provide education to people of various and no religious denominations, and the students quite often think they have received a superior education - especially students in church-sponsored inner city schools that seek to pull students out of the cycle of poverty. I gather from a number of sources that this is what the religious schools in Israel are trying to do.

Now, it's very true that there are religious schools that take a more ideological approach, but I'm not sure that even that is as bad for students as one might think.

I don't believe that religious zombies are created by religious schools. I think that for the most part, zombies are born, not made - although television and other addictions can help a zombie child along his path to zombiedom. If a child is born into a zombie environment, he or she is quite likely to grow up a zombie. If he's given a religious education, he'll grow up to be a religious zombie. If given an anti-religious education, he'll grow up to be an anti-religious zombie. Sometimes I think we have a few of those around here....

-JoeOffer-