What are the treats reserved for the Easter weekend? I am grateful that New Labour has not managed quite to abolish all bloodsports and so we can still sit back and enjoy the annual baiting of a government minister by the National Union of Teachers at their conference.

The sheer nastiness of these superannuated Trotskyists provides a better thrill than cock-fighting or the late night horror movie. Teaching used to be a profession - even a vocation. For the guidance of young minds and the forming of the moral sense were causes to be taken seriously.

But education has been demoralised. Christian teaching has been removed from schools and the Ten Commandments reduced to the slogan: "Wear A Condom". The reason behind this dehumanisation of the teaching profession is, of course, the worry that the promotion of morality and what used to be regarded as sacred truths might be racist - or is it sexist, or discriminatory, or elitist or brainist? The fact that "discrimination" and "indoctrination" are only ever used now in the pejorative sense tells you all you need to know about what's gone wrong with modern society.

"Discrimination" means being able to tell one thing from t'other. Now we are all expected to go around pretending there are no differences between any things anywhere for fear of being "offensive". Of course we need "indoctrination" - it merely means that some doctrine, some teaching, should be put into young minds. Well, the children get indoctrination in any case whether they like it or not. But which doctrines are to be preferred - my whole duty to God and my neighbour or a load of ideological claptrap about fair trade, anti-imperialism and global warming?

The religious education in schools now is the teaching of atheism. I am not exaggerating. What used to be taught was the Christian faith, broad in outline - not Church of England, not Roman Catholic or Methodist - the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. In our reformed and wondrous modern system it is decreed that religion may not be taught. Instead, teachers must teach "about" religions.

Now why I say this is nothing but atheism is as follows. Nothing can happen in a vacuum. Nothing comes out of nothing. All teaching must be from some perspective or other. To teach "about" religions means that the teacher must be assuming some position from which he is able to arbitrate among all the religions and look upon them equally and dispassionately. This position, this perspective, can be nothing other than secularism. It is certainly not Christian education, or even religious education.

But our sea of educational troubles rolls wider still and wider. All the talk and all the statistics - that is all the lies - say that standards are rising all the time. But another statistic seeps out and it is official: more than 40 per cent of pupils leave school with worse than grade three GCSE in English and maths. What the official figures mean of course is that four out of ten pupils leave school after eleven years "education" functionally illiterate and innumerate.

Now what would be a really worthwhile Easter present would be the abolition of the state system of education and the reinstatement of what used to be known as "schooling".

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.