Saying grace in school before lunch

[iambach]

My children attend a small rural school which is 'non-denominational' but everyday they are made to say grace before they are allowed to eat their lunch.

Part of me thinks its harmless as my children will form their own beliefs from all their life experiences not just school, it's just at early primary school age they are so impressionable. It has made for some interesting conversations at our dinnner table and tbh it is hard to explain to them. They see things so black and white, if the teacher says there is a god and i say i don't believe to them i am almost going against what they are being taught by teachers they respect.

Aibu to feel a bit annoyed about this? My Dh feels much more strongly about it than i do, he thinks it is ridiculous!

I thought the US history is the reason it is so religious - who went out there in the first place, the parts of teh world that subsequent immigrants have come from and so on.

I think they are just a totally different culture to us.

Do they do religion in australian / NZ / canadian classrooms? Are those countries more similar to us in their approach to religion in public life?

With regards to saying grace as a calm-down thing - surely it should be possible without mentioning God, or Jesus. The laws which request a religious element in schools seem archaic to me.

Is there a petition yet to have that changed?

I really think that thanking the people who made and/or served the food would be nicer.

if grace is thanking god then it is wrong of course to make those do it who don't believe in god.

What happens btw if they refuse to say grace. Do they still get to eat?

So all you grace supporters would be happy with the children thanking Satan, or the Mother Goddess or Allah or whoever. Because it's just a calming down thing after all, and it's nice to say thank you.

the school has to do this by law. well they don't have to do the grace part before meals. That isn't a law as such.

The whole opting out thing has always been difficult. When I was at school for example the way they worked it you could opt out of the assembly in the morning, but you had to opt out of ALL of it. Even the important parts you needed to be involved in.

So effectively you were punished for not wanting to pray to their god.

There is no requirement to say Grace. So you can write to the school k ask them to stop doing it.

Love the idea that sometimes we'd have them thank Satan for their food. I think mondays should be worship Satan day. With assembly praising him and asking him to come into our lives and lead us.

We'd only have to do it once and suddenly everyone would agree school wasn't the place for religion.

We used to say,
For what we are about to recieve
may the lord make us truly thankful
Amen
The at the end of the day we used to say,
At the end of the day we kneel and pray
Thanks you God for our work and play
We try to be good for we know that we should
Thats our prayer for the end of the day.

I am an atheist - Didnt really mean much to be as a child, just something we all had to do.

I think it is a terrible idea to recommend the exclusion of children from group and communal activities at school, at primary school age, on religious grounds.

I don't know why you would want to exclude them. I can't say that it made any impression on mine, had I not sat through assemblies at their school as a supply teacher, I would have imagined they didn't have them.

I think that patrents who get all uptight about it are making it out to be quite exciting to the DC. It would certainly have been much more interesting to me if my parents were getting het up about it-I would have paid far more attention!!

You can't stop them saying grace-you can stop your DC saying grace. I would actually be quite annoyed if I thought one parent was dictating school policy.

CustardCake you say "They have no right to insist the rest of the school don't say grace"

Yes we know they have no legal right. I am saying we should change it since it is an unpleasant thing to do to children

exoticfruits can I ask you outright how you'd feel about the satan thing? if the grace was to thank satan? because I'm thinking you are only ok with it now because it is the religion you prefer.

Satan worship isn't mainstream. We are not a satanist country.
I think that the central message of Christianity is one that everyone should aspire to 'love your neighbour as yourself'.
I don't think that schools should have collective worship and I don't think they should say grace- but neither do I think that one parent should write in and stop it-they would need to ask all parents.
Generally non faith schools don't say grace. If you send to a faith school then you have to expect it.

exoticfruits so your view of worship depends at least partly on it being a god on your approved list.

Most Christians (and muslims/jews too I expect) feel like this and it comes up on threads like this all the time. They say things like "oh but it's just a bit of praying to god/jesus. Where's the harm in that"

But they only have that attitude if it's their religion being impressed on them which means that they should understand why someone from a different religion or from no religion would have an objection.

Unpleasant? I hope you mean segregating children is unpleasant, not saying grace, I think if you did a poll at the local school most parents wouldn't have a problem, some probably like hearing the children singing hymns and taking part in the school nativity. A lot probably don't see a problem with preying before a meal at school either

So if prayers and Grace are something to be mumbled through and ignored why the fuck are we doing them? If I was a Christian I would be fuming that my religion was treated with so much disrespect. Disestablishing the church can't come soon enough. I'm sure it would strenghten the existing church and do away with this hypocrisy.

No secondary schools have forced collective worship that I know of. They may be breaking the law but at least they take the sensible view that it is a complete waste of 20 minutes. Universities - nope. Workplaces - nope. Pre-school - nope. So WHY are primary school children forced into it?

I don't think that we should have collective worship-I doubt whether your average 9yr old could tell you much about it 20 mins after-so why do it?

However the whole culture of our country is Christian, you can't understand a lot of history,art, music or literature without it. We follow the Christian festivals. Learning about it is very necessary.

Collective worship should be left to those who believe-in the relevant church.

I quite like the idea of a moment of quiet, and a pause, before the meal starts. However, I do see that is is more integrated into the school day and much harder to "opt out" of than other aspects of Christian worship, so I can absolutely understand why people would have problems with the form of words. Personally I have no issue with "Benedictus benedicat" as it is open to (almost) any interpretation which suits your belief system, but a Quaker "silent grace" would be an alternative, as would these

Absolutely. Learning about different religions and especially Christianity is essential. Taking part in rituals is personal and has no place in schools.

Moominsarescary, forcing other people's kids to pray to your god is unpleasant.

That's what the Satan example is about. If you have trouble seeing why I would say it was unpleasant imagine your kids praying to satan. Does that not make you shudder?

In 2001 1525 people classed themselves as Satanists (and I bet some of those were just a joke and not really) 42,079,000 classed themselves as Christian therefore it would be a bit strange to start saying grace to Satan.

Do we know the numbers from the last census yet? As the religion question was phrased differently in 2011 I would like to know if approx. the same amount said they were Christians.