I was wondering how I might protest about Michael Gove's wish to expand Conservative policy on tax funding more Faith Schools when I came across this letter from Professor William Shaw on the National Secular Society's Newsline at www.secularism.org.uk

I have written a letter to my MP, David Cameron, in response to the Gove plan to expand faith schools as reported in Newsline last week. The text is below.

Dear Mr Cameron I am writing to you as one of your constituents, and as an educator, to express my concern about Conservative policy on education in relation to religion both in Oxfordshire and nationally.

There is a wonderful document called the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has been around for over four decades and the UK has consistently shown contempt for it. Article 14 states that "Children can believe what they want as long as their beliefs do not harm others".

Tony Blair's premiership, once there has been time for its proper historical appraisal, will be remembered for two great crimes. The first is the Iraq war. The second is his abhorrent creation of Faith Schools. The very concept is a clear violation of Article 14, and such schools set out to (a) violate children's rights to freedom of thought; (b) undermine the proper teaching of science via the promotion of creationist drivel; (c) promote bigotry against gays and people from other faiths; (d) violate employment rights through the hiring and promotion of staff of the dominant faith.

(e) undermine the very concept of education, which is to teach a child how to think and to question, and replace it with the notion of telling them what to think and not to question.

They also destroy social cohesion through the notion that the school faith group is somehow superior, and create distance between faiths when there should be unity. The experience of Northern Ireland in promoting cohesion through secularising is an example to the rest of the country.

The misplaced popularity of faith schools with parents is probably nothing to do with faith and everything to do with a focus on discipline and a back-door selection procedure.

I am writing to you today because I have become aware of deeply disturbing remarks by Michael Gove, in an interview with the Yorkshire Post where he outlines Tory plans to expand faith schools. His remarks are utterly appalling. It is essentially a plan to have the Conservative party engage in the intellectual abuse of our children.

There is a minority of children at even greater risk from religious home tutoring, where their UNC rights of freedom of association and freedom of access to information are also violated. This should also be addressed, in a manner consistent with freedom of religion.

It is important to remember two very simple things: 1. The only difference between an evangelist and a paedophile lies in the difference between the abuse of a child's mind and abuse of a child's body.

2. The legal protection of freedom of religion should be about protecting the rights of people to believe, assemble and worship. It is not about giving people the right to ram their views down the throats and into the minds of others, particularly vulnerable children.

I call on you to sack Mr Gove as education spokesman and publicly commit the Conservative party to the abolition of Faith Schools. Otherwise your party will essentially be campaigning on a platform promoting child abuse.

*====+ This seems to me to sum up my concerns about a policy started by Tony Blair, pursued with destructive commitment in many parts of the USA, and corroding the need to encourage an open minded and rational approach to our education. Humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time and the world was not created in 4004BC.