On Not Abolishing Faith Schools

Abstract

This article finds Michael’s Hand’s argument for the abolition of faith schools to be deficient because key premises of his argument seem false. I argue that the concept of knowledge that Hand employs in arguing that no religious proposition is known to be true is overly strict. I reject Siegel’s attempt to amend Hand’s argument to make it stronger because Siegel employs a false construal of ‘faith’. I further argue that Hand’s premise that students in faith schools will not take their teachers to be religious authorities is very weak. Finally, I note that the abolishing of faith schools does not follow from either Hand’s or Siegel’s argument.