Definitions

Podnosh via Bad Science about education where the Charities Commission state (PDF):

The Commission, having been satisfied on the evidence before it, accepted in a particular case that an interactive website was a process capable of delivering educative value as it was capable of delivering learning through improving the student's analytical and learning skills.

An individual’s blog, on the other hand, is not likely to be of educative value, as
neither the subject matter nor the process is of educational value.

So define educative value:

There are two main aspects to educative merit or value:

• is the subject capable of being of educative value; and
• is the process such that it delivers educative value?

Er sorry am I the only one a little dissatisfied with a definition of educative value that uses itself as a term? It gets better

The educative value, or benefit, will usually be self-evident.

Ah so that's why we don't need a rigid definition. Oh but note the "usually"

Where the value is not self-evident, positive evidence of merit will need to be given.

and the definition of merit is?

Oh hell the two other blogs have given this a light fisking what I was more concerned with was the part where it gives the defintions of charity. Apparently the "advancement of religion" is a charitable purpose. Excuse me, how? Sure if you have a church organising a centre for helping the poor that's a charitable purpose (and appears in its own right), but how can the advancement of religion in and of itself be considered one. Do we atheists require charity?

We then get a quote from the Education Act 2002 that education should "promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society;" Spiritual? Wow sorry is the 21st Century or the 19th? If a school fails to teach religion as anything other than a collection of cultural myths is it failing its pupils?

Ah well here's a link on the same theme from Devil's Kitchen about the proliferation of religion in cities.

Religion to me is a crutch. For those unstable on their feet it helps them get around, trouble is those who hand out the crutches want everyone to use one. They give their children this crutch as they start to walk and teach them that it's the only way to get around and because that's the way they've been raised they never consider they don't actually need it.

Oh sure occasionally someone will come up with a shiny new crutch or an old traditional crutch and they might swap, but ask them why they need one at all and they look at you as if you're mad. They'll watch you walk around unaided in amazement and then try to get you to try the type of crutch they use because there's obviously something wrong with the way you're walking and this will help.