The Education Debate Continues – More Solas letters in the Scotsman – 26th June 2015

I agree that as parents we want “a safe happy environment conducive to learning”. That is better done in the context of a school whose ethos is based on Christianity.

Anne Seenan (Letters, 25 June) thinks that my statement that the SSS has no rational basis for its values is “absurd”. Unfortunately, she provides no basis for her own statement. Mere assertion does not constitute rational, evidence or logic, nor does the somewhat superior view that those of us who disagree with atheistic secularism don’t know what its principles are.

David A Robertson

Solas CPC

Robert Canning regards it as “self evident” that schools should promote “avoidance of behaviour that others should not have to suffer and the cultivation of behaviour that benefits others.”

I heartily agree. The debate is about which behaviours meet these criteria.

For example, the average secularist would want sex education embodying the usual ‘don’t have sex unless you really feel like it, and use a condom’ philosophy, believing that any consenting sexual exploration and experimentation is healthy and harnless.

Using Mr Canning’s own criteria, I would want sex education to present the case for reserving sexual relations for marriage between a man and a woman. Pupils should be aware of the mountain of evidence showing positive correlations between the well-being adults and, more importantly, children, and adhering to the traditional Christian understanding of marriage.

However, “reasonable human beings” disagree about the issue.

The Scottish Secular Society wishes to exclude from schools the distinctive, and usually more demanding, moral principles of Christians, retaining only a lowest common demoninator code of ethics that is remarkably similar to the personal views of most secularists that I know. (This is what I actually wrote – the published version is edited)

Richard Lucas

Colinton, Edinburgh