The mere idea of pupils being taught elementary physics according to the Book of Genesis and religion according to the Koran is enough for some teachers, worried about the future cohesiveness of British society.
In the Koran, of course, everything is subservient to religion; there are no laws other than that those passed down by Allah to Mohammed in the seventh century. To devout Muslims the Koran is not only law, it is the direct word of Allah.
In the Old Testament, the notion of God creating the world in six days, literally Monday to Saturday, is generally regarded as a metaphor, an image to express the inexpressible. But some Christians accept Genesis and its obvious anomaly - God creating light before creating the Sun - as unquestionable fact.
The fear is that faith schools are institutions for religious brainwashing, the inculcation of undesirable ideas and intolerance towards others who think or feel differently.
This week in the T&A, Councillor Dale Smith the Council's executive member for education, defended faith schools, saying: "You have got to recognise the contribution that faith schools have made to the education of young people in the district.
"Providing they take a respectful and cohesive approach they have a very positive influence."
Coun Smith said Feversham College, which became Britain's first Muslim state school in 2001, had proved that it could achieve excellent results for its pupils.
Philip Lewis, the principal of Bradford Churches for Dialogue and Diversity, said that there was a "jittery feeling" in society which he attributed to the fear of Islamic Fundamentalism.
But he pointed out that the young Muslim men who carried out the sky-jacking attacks on the United States in 2001 were educated at technical universities in prosperous German cities. Their counterparts responsible for the London bombings in July last year were educated in this country.
"They came out of secular educational establishments, not mosques, " he said.
In this country faith schools have a history and tradition of educating the poor that long predates state schools. In the sixth century schools were attached to monasteries and cathedrals for the training of priests, conduct the services of the church and to read and interpret the writings of the Christian fathers.
By the start of the Reformation in England, in the mid-1530s, there were about 400 schools for a population of 2.25 million.
Whereas church schools and grammar schools go back at least to the 16th century, compulsory elementary education for all only became law in 1870, thanks to Bradford Liberal MP William Forster.
The Bishop of Bradford, the Right Reverend David James, said: "The first Church of England schools go back to Edward VI (1547-1553).
Often private benefactors in conjunction with the Church set up grammar schools. Most of them were for the education of the poor.
The rich had private tutors.
"The Government encourages the Church to be involved in education because we are offering something valuable to the country's educational mix and have been doing so for centuries.
"We believed in education long before it was fashionable to do so and we still believe in education for all - it arises out of our faith in the God of all.
"All our church schools in Bradford (there are 60 in the diocese) are local community schools and not simply schools for Christians. We want them to have a Christian ethos but we welcome children of other faiths and no faith.
"This means that in some parts of the district a church school might contain children who are nearly all from a South Asian background.
Families of other faiths prefer a church school because they know their faith is respected.
"For example, St Stephen's Church of England school in Bowling has a higher proportion of Muslims than the other two schools in the area because of parental choice. They like the religious ethos in which faith is taken seriously and the faith they want for their children is respected.
"I go into schools a lot and I have never come across any teacher claiming that the Genesis creation stories are literal scientific accounts. They are more like parables. But if we take ethics out of science and the religion that undergirds ethics for most of us we shall very quickly destroy the world.
"If we took the Genesis message more seriously - thatweare responsible to God for the way we care for this amazing planet we live on - we would not be in the environmental mess we are in today.
"Secularists are not innocent where indoctrination is concerned.
I heard of a school where children were decorating Easter bonnets and a child was forbidden from putting a cross on it; she had to have the Easter bunny, " the Bishop said.
Teachers' unions may be concerned about teaching practices in independent faith schools but Philip Lewis said that most Christians would be unhappy with aCreationist ideology. A lot of biblical tradition is based on poetry and narrative.
"Anglican church schools and Roman Catholic schools have always been more multi-ethnic than most state schools; but if you want to have a go at faith schools you paint them as Creationist.
Most Christian schools have never been like that.
"They teach Evolution, but that is only a method, not an ideology.
Often, the problem is a kind of ideological secularism.
"The secular tradition comes in two sizes: a doctrinaire French secularism which banishes religion from civic and public life - that is running into trouble. Then there is the soft secularism which neither gives religion special privileges nor punishes it.
"There needs to be a debate between the religious tradition and secular believers which considers the question: why do parents like faith schools?
"According to the 2001 census, 70 per cent of people in this country described themselves as Christian.
We are not a secular society in the way that France is. There are high levels of religiousity, however minimalist.
"Faith schools have a well-defined ethos in which people know where they stand. There is a security of identity, and they are open to nonChristians as well.
"It seems to me that Anglican schools have a secure Christian identity which is what many parents want. They want their children to have knowledge of Christian traditions - one of the shaping foundations in Western culture, after all, " he said.
The Bishop of Bradford said 22 per cent of all children in this country are educated in Church of England primary schools. Banning faith schools therefore would place a tremendous extra burden on the state education system, including teachers.
