Learning without God

TV REVIEW: Faith Schools Menace?More4, Wednesday Nationwide Special,RTÉ1, Monday, Vexed,BBC2, Sunday The Great British Bake Off,BBC1, Tuesday, First Cut: Teen Undertaker,Channel 4, Friday

DOES ANYONE USE the term “faith schools” here? It says much about the evolution of our state-school system – predominantly Catholic – that we mostly just call them, well, national schools. That is changing, albeit at glacial speed, with the parent-led call for more multidenominational or non-denominational options to reflect an increasingly secular society. As schools reopen next month, prepare for the annual deluge of calls to Joe Duffy’s

Liveline

from non-Catholics who have no practical option but to send their children to Catholic schools. And that, by any rational measure, is wrong.

According to the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist Prof Richard Dawkins, in his fascinating but ironically preachy Faith Schools Menace?– the question mark must have been the programme makers'; he's in no doubt – it's going in the other direction in Britain. Faith schools are on the rise there, with about 7,000 publicly funded schools – one in three – now with religious affiliations. They're seen as academically stronger, and the clamour for places means that, as Dawkins puts it, "it's okay to exclude children on the basis of their faith but not on the basis of their race", and it's encouraging parents to "fake faith", either by ostentatious displays of church attendance or even by conversion.

“A little harmless hypocrisy, perhaps,” remarks Dawkins, who really does sound quite superior, “but are they saddling their children with ways of thinking that is hard to shake off.”

His central message was that faith education bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children. Religious education is taught as a subject in faith schools, but there is no government-directed religious curriculum – even though the government pays the bills – so he found that in a Muslim school the pupils were taught evolution but none of them believed it because of the teachings of the Koran.

Standing in front of one of Belfast’s sectarian murals, Dawkins remarked that education was one thing the Belfast Agreement failed to touch, with 90 per cent of children in the North still separated from the age of four in their own schools, so they could spend their formative years never meeting a child from across the divide. It’s difficult to argue that that’s a good thing.

Dawkins is given to provocative statements such as “children have the right not to be indoctrinated – to be able to make up their own mind after a proper, balanced education,” but he does have what comes across as a rather paranoid fixation with the power of faith schools. The flip side of his argument should mean that if he had crossed the Border into the South he would have seen churches overflowing with believers. It doesn’t seem to have worked like that.

WHY DON'T IRISH actresses make it in Hollywood? Irish actors do – it's easy to name at least half a dozen big-name stars – but actresses? The only one that springs instantly to mind is Maureen O'Hara – and she's 90.

Maybe they’re not thin or tough enough, or could it be that in the 1950s O’Hara fixed such a particular image of Irish womanhood in the Hollywood psyche – beautiful and feisty with red hair and flashing eyes – that there’s no room for any other types.

There's probably an academic paper somewhere to explain it, but I wish Mary Kennedy had asked the great star herself during the excellent interview on Nationwidethis week. I'm sure O'Hara would have had an opinion, because, as she demonstrated in the lively and intimate at-home chat, she's very much engaged with the world and quite willing to say what she thinks.

She should, she said, have won an Oscar for The Quiet Man– too right – and anyway there's no time for false modesty when you're 90. Kennedy got the tone perfectly and kept it true to the cosy Nationwideformat, even cheerfully wheeling O'Hara around her adopted home town of Glengarriff ("I'm a Dub and a Shamrock Rovers fan," she said), where she was stopped by fans and was game enough to be photographed with a baby perched on her knee. Her advice to young people is to go for what you want. "If you really want it, go for it, don't let anything stop you," she advised, a steely glint in her eye.

TUNING INTO THE BBC's new detective comedy, Vexed, I should have curbed my enthusiasm and remembered what a mangy, deranged pup we were sold with The Deep (still underwater, still daft). In its publicity spiel the BBC called the unaccountably named Vexed– is it because they knew it would annoy? – "bright, sexy and funny": perfect Monday-night fodder, in other words. Except it's trying so hard to be a clever zeitgeisty black comedy – plenty of jokes about corpses and cancer, obviously – that it misses the mark. The premise is standard enough: two detectives (Toby Stephens and Lucy Punch) investigate murders while dealing with their own tricky love lives. The first story involved the pair attempting to catch a serial killer who is using a supermarket loyalty-card scheme to pick out victims. At the scene of the crimes the sleuths spot Mamma Mia! DVDs, Men Are from Marsself-help books, Chardonnay and cat food – the killer uses customer purchase histories to target lonely single women.

Not bad as plots go. The sexy bit in the publicity material presumably referred to the potential love interest between the two detectives – nothing new but still it’s been known to work. But it, and the comedy, had no chance of working, because Toby Stephens appears so keen to shake off his costume-drama super-serious classical-actor roots that he opted to play the London detective as a gurning halfwit with a peculiar American twang.

Black comedy requires deadpan delivery. (Remember the funniest, blackest comedy in recent years, Nighty Night?) In one scene Jack looks down at a bloody corpse, rubs his eyes as a toddler would with both hands and says "boo hoo". If we're given this much ammo to hate a character, we're never going to find him funny.

THERE IS, ASviewing figures show, a huge appetite (sorry) for food programmes, which is why there's such a scramble to devise new formats, or at least tweak existing ones. The Great British Bake Offis a familiar-looking cookery competition, but this time it's all about cakes, with 10 home bakers (rosy-cheeked, prone to blubbing) competing to be crowned the best amateur baker in Britain. I blame the bizarre fashion for "cupcakes" – a hideous word that has replaced the perfectly serviceable fairy cake and heralded in the stupidity of paying €2.50 for an iced bun. It is presented by Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who are wasted on this silly programme and seem a bit mortified by the twee script and format. "Ovens at the ready," says Sue, followed by, "We'll start off with your signature cake." Who has a signature cake? "Very, very moist," was the highest accolade from the judges. "You could put that in front of royalty." Definitely an acquired taste – though the location, Kingham, in the Cotswolds, was picture-postcard beautiful.

The fun in funeral: Teenagers enter the undertaking business

More proof that the qualifications for some careers can't be measured in any CAO points system. This week's Cutting Edgefilm had a potentially sensational title, and it was on Channel 4, a station that's no stranger to the shock doc, but director Simon Alveranga's Teen Undertakerswas a sensitive, low-key documentary.

It followed 18-year-old part-time beauty queen Laura and 19-year-old Paul in their chosen careers as undertakers.

“I was a bit morbid as a child, I suppose,” explained Paul, a big burly lad who was astonishingly mature for a teenager. He was shown delicately preparing two bodies for burial: first a man without any family (“he deserves to be cared for, just as much as anyone else”) and then, harrowingly, his uncle.

His new girlfriend, Sonia, is also an undertaker, and they had lots to talk about. “Do you want to be buried or cremated? Double plot, eh?” They got engaged after a month. “As we know in our profession, life is short.”

Laura shrugged off her friends’ shrieks of “eeuw, you’ve to touch dead people,” with a someone-has-to-do-it attitude.

The only humorous moment in the documentary was when her firm took a stand at a fair to promote its line of coffins. A personal favourite was the model decorated with peas, called – what else? – “Rest in peas”.