. But the nature of the Michaela Community School, located in the unfashionable district of Wembley, and of a lawsuit it won this week in Britain’s High Court, offer lessons for other countries struggling to accommodate large immigrant populations and disparate mores.
Her pupils must, among other things, wear neatly turned-out uniforms, keep silent in corridors between classes, and eat the same vegetarian lunches that everyone else does that do not breach any religious dietary restrictions. Michaela is rigorous, oversubscribed, and one of the best-performing academic schools in Britain. It is also free or, more precisely, financed from tax revenues rather than school fees.
Birbalsingh is not opposed to religious practice outside school, but she will not allow it to divide her students, whom she is determined to unite in a single culture. Her statement in response to the court decision reveals this clearly; it contains no anti-religious sentiment, merely a determined embrace of a common ethos of which all pupils are required to be members and are expected to respect.
But although Birbalsingh’s words and system at Michaela school are mostly admirable and effective, she gets one thing wrong about what she has so splendidly created. It is that she still pays lip service to “multiculturalism.” She refers several times to it in her statement, but the truth is that Michaela is successful not because it is multicultural but because it is an oasis from multiculturalism.
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