Many people want to send their children to faith schools because they get good exam results, but they're not foolish enough to believe that it's because of faith that they get good exam results.
Interpretation
Parents may choose faith schools for their academic results, but they recognize that faith itself isn't the reason for those results.
In this quote, Richard Dawkins addresses the trend among parents to choose faith-based education for their children primarily due to the perceived academic superiority of these institutions. He suggests that while the success of these schools is often associated with their religious affiliation, parents understand that the underlying causes of academic performance are likely more complex and connected to various educational practices rather than the faith aspect itself.
In practice
In a discussion about choosing schools, one might refer to this quote to highlight the motivations behind selecting faith schools.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.
You parents can provide no better gift for your children than an education in the liberal arts. House and home burn down, but an education is easy to carry along.
Children, in a way, are constant learners. Certainly sponge-like. Absorbing everything without careful analysis, even though, at the same time, they are certainly capable of incredible insights.
My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener.
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
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