UK Supreme Court rules religious education in Northern Ireland is indoctrination

I don't know what religion you're talking about there. Possibly some kind of fundamentalist sect?

There are also many cases brought by atheists questioning communal/ team prayers, moments of silent prayer, etc.

It's a nation of laws, and clarifying them is useful.

Fwiw, if I had children in a state school in Oklahoma or any state where religious fundamentalist zealots were insisting on basically protestant prayers or indoctrination, I would take my business elsewhere. This was the bone of contention that caused an RC bishop of NY in the mid 1800s, known as Dagger John, to push for an end to protestant proselytising societies' involvement in running NY public schools and to start working on establishing a separate nationwide, diocesan administered RC school system.

I grew up in Ireland, and attended a 'multi denominational' secondary school where Religion class in the late 70s and early 80s was pretty much a civics debate class. It was a time of enormous social change in Ireland, so it was a class everyone enjoyed. Religion was not an exam subject, but the lack of homework and tests wasn't the reason for its popularity.

Anyway, I have friends in both NI and Ireland whose children sat out sacramental prep and / or worship assemblies in their schools and did not experience bullying. If bullying is part of the school culture and is such a problem that it was a real fear of parent G, then perhaps it would have been more in the child's interest to fight against that, and if school administrators dragged their feet, to present a case to the court based on the effects of that. It's shocking that the probability of bullying was accepted without question. Makes you wonder why the parent thought any of the Christian 'indoctrination' was really hitting its mark.

Faith and schools in NI are much more intrinsically linked than that - almost all education in NI is faith based, choice is extremely limited.

@mathanxiety

Reading the links, it was a state school, non denominational.

I think it is pretty much a given that teaching any religion to a child as being the absolute truth can be very damaging.

For example, it teaches them to cherry pick. Read the good bits, ignore the bad bits.

Ignore science, and evidence based thought processes.

As for morals, what morals does it teach ?

These are state schools and religious education is built into the system. I grew up there many years ago but, back then, state schools taught protestant beliefs and Catholic schools were sort of private

I am not sure about NI, but in Scotland state schools work on a catchment system. Live in a certain part of the country, then your kid goes to a set school.

I follow the atheist community casually, and I don't think the US is as clear cut as you make out. There is pretty much a near constant stream of court cases in the US brought by Christians against public schools. A football coach wants to have team prayers on the touchline ? It's off to SCOTUS we go. Indeed, many US politicians make very public displays of not understanding the separation of Church and State.

It's a test case, and a very valid one in my view.

So these parents unwittingly sent their child to a non- secular school in NI and were shocked to find their child was being taught the tenets of whatever religion ran the school?
I call BS.

I'm in the US where you can choose between secular or private religious-run schools, or other secular like Montessori or Steiner or whatever. If you choose any option besides secular/ state schools you pay tuition. It's a system I support. But I don't buy their story and I don't think it would have been onerous to take the child out of the school - they were already prepared to take their fight with the child's school all the way to the top court, and I wonder how that affected the child.

Good. It’s heading in the right direction and the sooner faith schools don’t exist the better. Teach about different religions but not as truth or fact.

It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of those with faith also follow the same religion as their parents. I wonder why…

I say this as someone who attended both primary and secondary faith schools. When I was about 19 I thought what a load of nonsense and have been an atheist ever since.

Re is taught in a more plural way, all main faiths covered. But ‘collective worship’ is mandated and this is Christian. So they have regular visits from a minister, and Christian services at Easter, harvest, Xmas etc. I’ve never heard they’ve had another religious leader in to guide a service. I wouldn’t say children are pressured directly but God is presented in a factual way rather than as one belief.

It is a very interesting development. Thanks for this post, OP.

I wonder where private schools sit in this? They are bound by the same rules too or are they exempt?

So many of the long established boarding/day schools have a Chapel and chapel attendance is compulsory for boarders. Think of places like Wycombe Abbey, Wellington College..

These institutions, whose traditions are very much anchored in Christianity and marking of various important school events are still held in the Chapel and with Christian prayers. The latter sometimes almost becomes indoctrination!

In today's pluralist society, where national events (e.g Remembrance day service) are being marked with multifaith prayers, schools still seem to not want to change!

I wouldn't mind my child learning Christianity as truth if they went to a RC or CofE school, as we have discussions at home so they know what we believe as a family and can form their own opinion. But I am against compulsory collective worship because there is a difference between learning and taking part and schools don't always understand my perspective as a Muslim parent, and think that by seeking to withdraw my child from worship I'm somehow 'refusing to integrate'. When I was at my CofE school decades ago the Jewish pupils came into assembly after the religious part had been concluded, so I'm surprised by the resistance I have sometimes faced with DC.

Our local dioceses are looking into the current local agreed syllabus for RE. We already teach about other religions, including Sikhism, Hinduism, Islamic and Judaic faiths, and humanist views too. But the Christianity taught is Church of England focussed and they are looking to widen this to a more world view of Christianity, encompassing orthodox, Pentecostal and other Christian viewpoints. It will take a while but is an interesting move from Anglican dioceses.

I looked for a thread on this yesterday, I think this is a very interesting development which I think will have big implications here in Scotland too. Basically our choices are catholic or Protestant schools, despite the latter being called ‘non-denominational’. It would be great for Christianity to be presented as one of many beliefs and not fact.

Good! The humanists are right on this in my opinion.