To ask the nursery about grace?

[Stangirl]

My DD (2) attends a nursery 2 days a week - since last October. I am very happy with the nursery and love the way the staff are with the kids. DD seems very happy there.

They just had a Mother's Afternoon where the mums were invited in to attend a music and movement session, facepainting, playing, tea with the kids. I went along and it was lovely apart for one thing - one of the children was asked to say grace before the sandwiches and said a few words thanking god. I was shocked by this as I had believed them to be non-religious - teaching and celebrating all festivals etc but not active worshipping. As an avowed atheist I am quite perturbed.

Would you ask them if this is usual and if they are teaching them grace?

being respectful is just common decency.

I think that it is a question of being respectful rather than showing respect.

"As for the argument that more middle-class folks go to the faith schools its a bit chickena and egg, perhaps a disciplined life leads to higher wealth."

If all the parents of children who attended the higher-performing faith schools were devout Christians you might have a point.

However many parents have been known to, er, exaggerate their faith a little in order to get their children into the higher-performing schools in their area. So a faith school that starts out only slightly outperforming other schools in the area starts attracting the type of parent who is organised enough to pretend to be an active church-goer for just long enough to ensure their child is top of the list to get in. They hey presto, results keep going up and more middle class parents are attracted. And so on.

Oh Ok, I didn't know that.

Then hey presto.

Forgot to say that of course the churches aren't going to discourage this state of affairs at all, they are delighted to get the bums on seats that they otherwise wouldn't.

Anyone watch Rev?

The middle-class thing explains a lot actually, there is a huge difference at our school (faith) between the number of parents in the playground this monring (approx 100) and the number in chruch yesturday (me and the dinner lady!).

All maintained schools have a statutory duty to provide a daily act of worship, information about this can be found in DFE Circular 1/94.

In Bradford: If a headteacher considers that collective worship ?wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character? is inappropriate to the school community they may approach SACRE for a Determination.

If you really want to understand the act RosemaryandThyme, and anyone else, the Humanists set it out as clearly as anything I have seen.here

RosemaryandThyme

*Given that some people like collective worship and some parents don't - why don't parents just choose the schools that align with their view-point ?

There are many non-faith schools parents can send their children to.

This might be the case in some areas of the country, but in rural areas this is simply not true. Irrespective of the fact that all schools have to teach group worship by law (as discussed above), if you live in the countryside you just don't have any choice (unless you home educate).

That link is very good, the part relating to non-religious voluntary and foundation schools gives the impression at least that the school leadership and governers can choose to have an act of worship or not - presumably at these schools the deeds wouldn't require an act of worship as by definition they'd then be religious schools and be in the next paragraph down.

So for these schools and those where christianity is inapproriate there does seem to be an alternative choice, perhaps not many schools realise that parents might like things to be changed ?

I appreciate that choice of schools is in practice limited for many people on both sides, I daily drive past two schools that I decided not to send mine too because I thought they were non-denominational, in order to send them to a very faith advocating school - I genuinley didn't think all schools were quite so faith based, the children have daily worship and almost everything they bring home has a faith connection from reading books to pictures they colour in, all art is about symbolism and parents have booklets detailing what values they (the parent) should be demonstrating at home that week and how to go about doing this.

The choice of schools is detailed here

I find it quite amazing that the link that I gave seems to be government information on schools here with no mention (unless I missed it) about collective worship. I am not surprised that parents don't realise.

exoticfruits - having fairly recently been through the primary 'induction' process with my DC at a community school, I can vouch for the fact that Christianity, God, assemblies etc were NOT mentioned at any stage.

Certainly no forms to ask you whether you'd like your DC to opt out of religious assemblies. I suspect that this is not uncommon - it is just implied and assumed by the system that you won't have an issue with it, whether or not you are a practising Christian.

We certainly were never told that part of the regular activities at our community school would be visits to the local church. There was at least one, probably more CoE and Catholic schools in the area, so it wasn't as if the religiously inclined were not already catered for. About a third of all state schools in England are faith based, the vast majority either CoE or Catholic. Given that only 15% of the population go to church even once a month Christians are obviously massively over catered for when it comes to school places, with absolutely no need to have any Christian prayers etc said in non-denominational schools, which many parents may in fact have actively chosen over what they may see as the religious counterparts.

Only 10% of adults in the UK claimed to attend church regularly (ie every week) in 2007. Five years later that has probably declined further given the general trend. From that I would conclude that whilst the UK has in the past been a Christian country, it is now one where for most people religion (or at least the organized approach) is pretty much irrelevant

www.whychurch.org.uk/trends.php

It is still a Christian country while the Queen is Head of state and church-despite the small number of church goers.

I was shocked that the Gov Direct site seems to give basic information on what to expect from schools, homework, how to set up a free school, the curriculum, how to Home Educate-in fact everything possible as far as I can see-and yet it fails to mention the part religion plays.

It seems strange to me why atheists worry about minor religious observance like saying grace. It seems similar to homophobic people worrying about their children being 'taught' homosexuality at school. Your children are not going to catch religion by saying grace. Really.

It seems strange to me that Christians are so worried about the thought of their children being in a secular atmosphere for 6 hours a day. Do they think they will "catch" atheism, or something?

Interesting comparison.

Bollocks though.

Homophobia is by definition irrational.

Christianity has its leaders in the House of Lords on no merit other than job title. The religious have a disproportionate amount of power. Religion education is fine, religious observance is not. Unless you are happy for your child to also perform rites and rituals from every other religion as a matter of course, without your consent or knowledge, because that is what is happening to the children of non-Christians.

It wouldn't bother me if I lived in a non-Christian country that my children said prayers / sang religious songs / said grace etc. from a different religion. It's all part of the culture of the country. To be honest, I don't think rites and rituals matter very much.

.

"It's all part of the culture of the country. To be honest, I don't think rites and rituals matter very much. "

Christianity might be PART - but not all - of the history of the culture in the UK. But it is not the religion of many of its citizens.

If the rites and rituals don't matter, why bother having them?

Actually I guess one of the reasons that schools don't advertise the fact that you can opt your child out of Christian worship is that it would land them with staffing and space issues if they suddenly had to deal with say, half the children being elsewhere during assembly.

Evidently churches disagree with you, or they would stop doing them.

We do not live in a "Christian Country." That is meaningless now. We live in a country with an outdated nominal theocracy, where a majority claim to be a religion that a tiny minority practice.

Most people are not "Christians." They might be cultural catholics, or cultural anglicans, but that is a different matter entirely.

Is your religion a matter for the state? Would you accept the state coming into your workplace and insisting on a prayer before the use of heavy machinery? Do you find it acceptable that in one area of the UK, women are discriminated against BY LAW due solely to religion?

We ought to have freedom of thought and freedom to practice whichever religion seems appropriate to us at the time. In our own time, outside of school, hospitals, the military, away from work. Prayer belongs in churches or inside your own head.

Not in school.

As an aside, DD said to me on the way into school

'I'm excited - we're going to see dead Jesus today'. 'Oh really', I said, 'that doesn't sound very nice'. 'Oh no, it's fun', she said.

It seems strange to me that Christians are so worried about the thought of their children being in a secular atmosphere for 6 hours a day. Do they think they will "catch" atheism, or something?

Has anyone said this?
I can't see they would bother if they have a Christian life in the home.

I panicked about my ds being in a 'secular' atmosphere, so I sent them to Catholic schools where they are having a great time and receiving a decent education to boot

You need a medal for sticking it out on this thread