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?

exoticfruits really has made the most valid point in all these 460something posts. If you want to change the law of your land you need to organise, become a movement, get the pollies on side, have a bill drawn up and if it's passed and receives assent you've won. As I said before though, if things in the UK are anything like they are here in Oz there are so many swinging / marginal seats that the pollies won't want to rock the boat by upsetting the theists so at best you might get a private member's bill that will most probably be defeated or lost in committee. That's democracy - flawed but far better than the alternatives.

"I bet your DCs are not in the least bothered by the subject."

Whether or not my DCs are 'bothered' is only one of the issues. They are too young to have any proper understanding of what worship means, and make any kind of informed decision about whether they want to do it or not.

Exactly PoppaRob-someone has said that moaning on MN makes a difference-it really doesn't unless someone organises it to go somewhere. It takes an act of Parliament to repeal a law.

Therefore Bonfire-being in assembly shows them what worship means to make an informed decision later.

Sorry-I couldn't resist that one-ignore it!

Pu have no idea what campaigning anynof us are doing. We're not, I admit, being very effective! However we one day may get a government that doesn't feel the need to appease Christians. Cameron's apparent stance on gay marriage surprised me- maybe he'll be the onento repeal this antiquated law too.

exoticfruits - the point is that if they are too young to understand, then the experience is - at best - pointless.

exoticfruits do you agree with the law as it stands?

You seem to say that it should be the child's choice about whether they participate in worship at school but it is currently up to the parents to either withdraw them or not. Do you agree with this? Do you think the law should be changed?

Not many people are doing anything. If all parents united it would change. Half the trouble is that most parents think their DCs are at a secular school in the first place! Not helped by the Gov Direct site which manages not to mention it!

Once upon a time we of western / British sensibility would say that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", but now we seem to be subjected to the eastern / Japanese idea of "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down". :(

Yes-clara.I think that law should be changed! I think religious education is essential, but I don't think that collective worship has any place in schools.

I am merely pointing out that people have to actually do something-not just moan.

My main point is that you can think what you like as a parent and, although you are bound to bring up your DC according to your philosophy, they do not have to follow. They have every right to make up their own mind. And you can still have the same loving relationship. I still don't understand why it should bother me that my DSs don't believe in God when I do.

My dp and I are both atheists and our dc went to a nursery where the children said a short grace before they ate lunch. My dc were too young to understand the whole God concept but they were both able to understand that they were being thankful for having nice food to eat when other children in the world have no food or clean water. I liked that they were being taught to think of others at this early stage and don't really mind that God was part of that. When I have to deal with Father Christmas and the tooth fairy, I will let them decide about God too.

" I still don't understand why it should bother me that my DSs don't believe in God when I do." Has anyone said it should?

You all seem bothered that you are atheists and your DCs might be Christians.It seems exactly the same to me. Why do they have to think the same?

I have always asked parents of children under the age of about 12 if there is anything their child should not eat. My DCs have dairy allergies and intolerances, and some of DD1's friends have serious peanut allergies. If a parent said to me to go ahead and feed their DC whatever I was having myself then I would do that. If they said they were strict vegetarians then I would try to respect that or ask them for suggestions we could all live with because I would take the hint that they had an issue with their child being served meat products. I have never served any pork products to DS's Jewish friends even though their parents have never said anything about it.

I do not want to put a child in a position where they feel they are being a nuisance in my home, or if they are diffident, where they feel they have to speak to the scary-looking woman wielding the wooden spoon me and make a special request for a certain meal. I also do not want to give a child the idea that I am a short order cook and they can have whatever they like when they come for dinner, because there are some children who are capable of doing that and I want to discourage it. So I ask the parents. Within those parameters, and with respect for the firmly held beliefs of others, I serve whatever we are all having to friends.

I nearly smacked exMIL when she presented DD1 with a bowl of ice cream one time when she was about 4. exMIL didn't 'believe' in allergies and even DD1's hives and wheezing didn't convince her there was a link to the dairy. The DCs' issues with dairy are not life threatening, and I expect them to be sensible and avoid dairy that is served in other people's houses, not to make a huge fuss about it, and if parents ask me beforehand I will tell them they have this issue. If not, I leave it to the DCs' judgement. They bring their inhalers along.

When it comes to religion, a matter I consider more important than the choice between spag and meatballs or just plain sauce, I want a school to continue to acknowledge that it is the parent's job and responsibility to make decisions on matters of faith. The law recognises this when it gives parents the right to opt out of the elements of school life that touch upon religion, but it doesn't think through the implications of its own logic and leave it altogether to parents to see to their own children's religious upbringing. Schools instead provide a lazy option for the established church (and the fact that CoE style children's worship will be laid on as part of the wallpaper like school meals that include pork is not specifically advertised).

Sorry to sound like a zealot here, but it would bother me to have my children taught to pray a different version of the Our Father from the one they pray at home and in church. It would bother me to have my girls asked to cover their heads in school and when out and about.

exoticfruits, it would have bothered me greatly if my daughter had developed a theist belief system. As an atheist I've always tried to foster an attitude of enquiry in her, and to discount ideas lacking in credible evidence, so if she'd embraced supernatural or paranormal beliefs I would feel I'd failed to foster the development of her curiosity and ability to enquire and follow logical argument. The late Carl Sagan's TV series and book opened my mind past the dogma I was taught at my C of E school. In one episode he said "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."

I guess as parents we come to our own conclusions about the truth about the universe and we form an outlook on life that we essentially believe to be the right one. And as long as our children are young, we would like to pass that onto them without our message being infiltrated and undermined by the state school system. I don't care if my children eventually come to different conclusions as me, as long as they are happy, and it is a free choice.

And actually just teaching a child the facts, without interference from opinion, belief, etc. would be a secular education. So the idea of secularism in schools isn't about sheltering our children from anything.

There is such a thing as religious brainwashing and indoctrination. It does happen.

If I am being totally honest, I think that if a child of mine is educated to think critically and not to participate in religious worship but to learn about religion instead. And if they learn all about science and have the ability to assess supernatural claims etc. in a rational manner. Then, they will either end up atheist/agnostic/skeptic like me or will be such a reasonable and moderate believer that I couldn't possibly object to it! And at least they will have got to their position totally based upon their own choices, without any childhood indoctrination.

mathanxiety, I attended a friend's wedding ceremony some years ago and the version of the Lord's Prayer was different to the one I learned at school. I asked the (fairly young) priest afterwards if they'd changed the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds too and he apologised and said he didn't know how the old ones went so he couldn't say. I guess these things do change and unless we want to recite them in Aramaic then we have to accept change. I can't stand our Australian national anthem but I'm stuck with it... same goes for the Lord's Prayer for you!

This catching catching Christianity thing is a silly red herring usually brought up by people who like the status quo because it gives Christianity the special status that they believe it deserves. I object because I don't believe you should have to be a nominal Christian to access any state funded service, and because I don'tnthink Christianity should be presented as the norm and other faiths or non faith as the opt out..

PoppaRob, what an eloquent, if passive-aggressive, insult to all the religious people out there.

'I'm not a Christian, I don't want to be in the room when others are worshipping'

Define 'worship'. This word is all over this thread. I had a religious EDUCATION, I didn't go to school everyday, throw down a prayer mat and start praying up to the sky. Prayers or 'worship' were only present during RE lessons, apart from that you wouldn't know what faith the school was ...well apart from the words RC on the blazer!

No, HalfPastWine that is false. It is compulsory in every state school to have broadly Christian worship. I think almost if not all atheists have NO ISSUE with education about culture and religion. See here

I respect that many people would prefer education to be secular but don't you think that it will come full circle.... 'Birds of a feather flock together'. I think it will lead to more faith schools cropping up. And then we start again. Non faith will want to attend certain schools in catchment and the fight will start again.

PoppaRob, It's not a question of the Our Father changing and I have to accept it. It's a question of the Catholic version my children have been taught being different from the one recited in the CoE. It is perfectly within their grasp that a different faith community might have different prayers and different forms of worship and they have been brought up to know that there are a lot of religious traditions, and they would expect to see those different traditions and hear those different prayers in other places of worship.

However, I don't want my young children running up against a different version in school, where they are expected to take the teacher's word as law when it comes to behaviour and the content of lessons any more than I want them being told they are out of favour with God for not wearing a hijab in school. Small children cannot slice and dice to that extent.

And as a matter of fact, for English-speaking Catholics, the English translation of the Nicene Creed has recently changed, as has the Confiteor, the Sanctus, and many of the responses and acclamations, as well as the Eucharistic Prayer and the priest's prayer at Consecration. The reason for the changes was to reconcile the form of words better with the original Greek of the New Testament. The Our Father remains unchanged. If my children had learned to participate in Mass in Irish, they would have said a different version of the English prayers that have now been reconciled with translations into all the other languages in which Mass is said now that Latin is no longer used exclusively.

HalfPastWine, When you pray to any higher being you worship, whether it involves a prayer mat, orientation to mecca or Rome, or everyone facing the teacher in a classroom. RE lessons are surely not participatory worship? They are supposed to be a descriptive survey of known religions? There is a difference between learning about different religions and participating in them through prayer.