to think God has no place in my 5 year old's school

[MeSoFunny]

She told me at bedtime last night that 'bad people die but Jesus came to suffer for us so we don't have to'. We're not religious, in fact we're Humanists, and fail to see why a non-religious school would be inviting a local youth 'education' group in to give regular assemblies to children this young (if at all).

Why aren't other people questioning it? Why aren't our children being encouraged to develop critical faculties? I'm feeling frustrated and cross.

Personally I resent the fact that to avoid collective worship I'd have to make my child feel like an outsider by removing him.

tiggytape v helpful clarification, thank you. There appears to be a divide between what's required in the funding agreement and what happens in practice, at least for some academies... not all of them are running daily assemblies, that's for sure, so it would be difficult for them to provide the daily act of collective worship. I shan't name the schools, as I think it's a good thing that they're not doing this.

Altinkum - a massive part of the way our world is run? Not sure where you get that from, only Iran & the Vatican city are recognised theocracies. Surely being taught how the world is actually run, perhaps beginning with our own political/democratic process might be more useful - but there is no requirement to teach that.

I think that reading the bible is important for developing critical thinking and for understanding a great deal of European art & culture.

But she's 5 and what adults tell her is unquestioned. Schools need to take that responsibility seriously.

Could you volunteer to go in and run a similar session along humanist lines? Or point them in the direction of a similar group save that they are humanist? (or ask them to provide a balanced range of inputs from all religions etc)

The reaction you got would give you a heads up on the reason they are coming lots - if they aren't interested then maybe the head does have a hidden agenda of brain washing them young. If they welcome you with open arms then maybe they are using the (free?) group as cheap way of filling school time with minimal numbers of staff as all the kids are in the hall watching freeing up most staff to do marking or have meetings or eat cake or do whatever they do.

Would also be worth asking for an explicit comment to be made before and after each of these sessions to point out that what the group have said isn't necessarily the truth, lots of people don't believe it and that some will find it in direct opposition to their own beliefs - and that nobody is right or wrong.

Mind you they might not want to come if it is announced in such a way!

But surely if you have repeatedly told your child that you don't believe in God, she must know by now that not all adults do believe the same thing, and so must also know that you don't believe adults unquestioningly, because adults don't all believe the same thing?

Altinkum - I didn't say it had no effect, that would be bonkers, but to suggest the world is run by religion simply isn't true.

But adults should talk to young children acknowledging that not everyone believes the same thing - it's a shame that this doesn't always happen.
For example when we went on the church visit the person could have started by saying "You have come to visit our church today. This is where Christians come to hear the Easter story. Easter is one of the most important times in the year for us ... The Easter story starts on Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey .... " To do it without this type of introduction is disrespectful to the children I feel.

YADDDDNBU

It's entirely unreasonable that 'non-denominational' schools in this country have any religious worship imposed on children at all.

Definitely go with "It's just a made-up story, which some people believe." Compare to fairy tales. Maybe ask her if she thinks it's true or not and why/why not to work on her critical thinking. That's my plan when my daughter goes to school in four years time! You're absolutely right that youth 'education' indoctrination groups don't constitute worship. Definitely should be balanced out with visits from other religious/non-religious groups if they're going to do it all.

Write to the head asking him/her to justify this group's visit. Important to stand up for at least a modicum of rationality. Sounds like a good way of not having to come up with content for assemblies, tbh.

Grace,

To be fair - and to promote proper critical thinking about religion - it is not right to compare the Easter story to fairy tales. The latter have no basis in fact, whereas there are parts of the Christian story which do have a basis in fact.

'Yes, there was a man called Jesus who was born around 2000 years ago in the country that we now call Israel. A world religion called Christianity has been built up around it. Their holy book is called the Bible, and the New Testament is about Jesus' life and the early years of the Church. Because it wasn't written down until many years after the death of Jesus, it isn't as accurate as e.g. a television film on the news might be today, and it describes what people believed about Jesus - partly beased on predictions / prophecies of Judaism, which was the religion that Jesus himself followed, as did all his original friends and followers. People told stories around what Jesus did, and those are likely to have changed over time before they are written down (and in fact there werre 4 different people who wrote the stories down, and each of them are different - a bit like we have lots of different books of traiditional tales such as Red Riding Hood, in which the basic story is similar but the details are diferent). There were lots of 'prophets' and 'leaders of new religions' at that time, as there are many today - I wonder why a major world faith has grown up around jesus while we do not remember any of the others now, however important they were at the time?'

It is much more interesting - and much more educational - to think about anddiscuss relgions in this way (and will promote the kind of critical thinking that your child will find useful in later life when exposed to e.g. evangelism for various mainstream religions as well as cults) rather than to dismiss them as 'fairy stories'.

I think the trouble with telling children what to believe/not to believe - 'It's all fairtyales' - is that you end up being virtually identical to the evangelical group running assembly who say 'You must believe in Jesus.'

We live in a multi-faith society, though some schools and communities are much less diverse than others.

In my daughter's secondary school class, there are 'born-again' Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and those who do not hold a religious faith. They need to understand and respect one another.

I think it's a parents job to promote understanding and respect.

My 5 year old dd goes to a non denominational school. However, she was coming out with similar comments and I made some enquiries and it turns out they have a Christian assembly lead by an evangelist guest speaker each week! By government guidelines, all schools in England have to offer collective worship of a Christian nature for at least 50% of assemblies! So it's not actually the schools poor judgement but a government requirement that nobody bothers to question.

Schools can however appeal to their local council to be omitted, if they don't feel it is appropriate. This is often the case in multi cultural schools. Also you as a parent have the right to withdraw permission for your children to attend collective worship. You can request a template letter from the humanist website. If more parents did, this silly tradition perhaps wouldn't continue for as long.

Hi teacherwith2 - you finished your explanation by saying that no other faiths with leaders from a long time ago are now remembered, whereas one has grown up around Jesus. Well, surely Buddhism and Islam had leaders from antiquity too ? - The Buddha, and Mohammed ?
Your explanation seemed quite christian biased to me, but then I guess we will all in our explanations to our DC's put our own slant on things. How inclusive we are of others and their views is part of that variety.
But whilst it's natural this should happen with parents talking with their own DC's, those of us talking to other people's DC's need to take even more care that we are respecting the children and their development, and respecting their family's faith or outlook too.

I think children should have the choice and I fail to see why religion is a compulsory subject in secondary schools. My children do question christianity teachings within the school. I've taught them about other religions myself, including the main pagan festivals that christianity nicked. (Oestre anyone?)

Apologies, what I meant was that the country that we now call Israel around the time of Christ was a ferment of sects and religious factionalism. The leaders of those sects are not remembered today - I find it (intellectually and historically ) interesting to wonder why Jesus stood out amongst the hundreds of others? Accident? The writing down of the Gospels? Powerful leaders in the early church?

To be clear, I would give a similar - but different in details - explanation about Buddhism, Islam etc. Their leaders came from different times and different places and so the details are different.

None of the religious texts of the major world faiths can be compared to 'fairy stories', which is the basic point that I was making.

(Read my post back - I did say 'at that time', which perhaps you didn't pick up?

Jesus c o CE (AD if you're being Christian about it)
Buddha c 400 - 500 BCE (BC)
Mohammed c. 500 CE
Guru Nanak (founder of Sikhism) 15th century CE)

Sorry, pressed post too soon - I would not count any of those as being 'around the time of Jesus'. I realise that you paraphrased it into 'a long time ago', but that wasn't what I was saying, I was making a specific point about Palestine and surrounding areas around 2000 years ago.

Mine go to a religious school. The kids will all zoom in on religion for the first year or two and then it will take a back seat. It always does. They loose interest.

Isn't it part of the curriculum to have some exposure to lots of different religions so that the pupils have some understanding of others? People who are different. Also there is a lot of good meaning that non christians can take form the parables.

It's a real pity that there's so much misunderstanding about Christianity. Would you all be horror struck if your dcs came home and told you they had decided to become Christians?

Probably, yes

Read Finding Happiness by Abbot Christopher Jamison and then decide what influences you would like your child to grow up with

Depends. Does he live in the catchment area?