to think worship has no place in a school?

[HollyMiamiFLA]

By all means - talk about what people of faith believe in, use examples from their books as moral examples, use example of people with no faith etc. Lots of good opportunities for "doing the moral thing" and talking about right and wrong.

But keep "collective worship" out of it. If a child wants to pray, they can do it at their own time.

Yes - people can opt out. Children can sit there and contemplate. But it's difficult to opt out. Surely opting in rather than assuming that children want to pray to a God they really do not understand is better.

But it's compulsory - and in theory, OFSTED will look to see if your school is doing this:

" All maintained schools in England must provide a daily act of collective worship. This must reflect the traditions of this country which are, in the main, broadly Christian.

Parents have the right to withdraw their child from the daily act of collective worship and sixth-formers can decide for themselves whether or not to attend, without giving a reason for doing so. Schools must comply with this wish and must ensure a duty of care for pupils who are withdrawn from collective worship."

(I seem to be on a bit of a vent at the moment [grin[)

Not teach - why shouldn't schools pray to Shiva? Or Odin?

Why pray to a Christian God?

wonder how many of the christians who say it's not doing any harm would be happy for their children to attend compulsory worship of Allah, the Daghda, Cernunnos, Odin, Shiva, Modron.... and so on?

When I was a christian I would have been horrified at the thought, and was intelligent enough to extrapolate that people of other beliefs shouldn't have to mark their children out as different so they don't have to attend a christian worship ceremony either.
Which is why I thought it was a bad idea even when I was a christian.

Now I'm a pagan, I absolutely do not want my child to be told by the school that YHWH is the one true god, who created everything then go from that to a lesson where he's told that evolution is what happened. how is he supposed to know what's true if the same teachers are telling him both?
Or what if at home he was told a different creation myth? (he's not, we believe in evolution because it's a fact!)

He can learn ABOUT religions without being forced to worship in any!

WoTmania took issue with my remark about anti-Christian prejudice, saying that of course Christians do not suffer routine discrimination and violent attacks against them. It is true that Christians are not discriminated against, but it is not true that there are no attacks against Christians because they are Christians, as this article in the Telegraph shows.

But that is not really what I meant. The kind of things people used to say about gays -- 'don't let them near your children', 'they're just trying to pervert their young minds with their sick ideas' are exactly the same kind of things that are being said about Christians in the context of collective worship.

I doubt if most people would mind an assembly at school led by someone who was LGBT which basically said 'it's great to be LGBT'. I certainly wouldn't. How is that different to an assembly that says 'it's great to believe in God'? Just as it will be affirming for the young LGBT people in the school to hear that it's great to be gay, it will be affirming for the young Christian people to hear that it's great to be a Christian.

And we haven't yet got on to exactly what damage is going to be caused to children and young people by being asked to pray, sing hymns and hear selected Bible stories. I very much doubt if they are being subjected to hell-fire sermons: it is more likely that they are hearing the story of the prodigal son or the Good Samaritan. But let's not let the reality get in the way of lurid fantasies, eh?

How about 'teaching the christian god and only the christian god is damaging to children'.

DS1 had a full on creationist teacher. He came home for a whole telling me how 'god created everything', 'good lets us see and talk and blah blah blah' - with some of these teachers there is respect of other people's beliefs. It should be all or none. I'm happy for my children to learn about all religions and faiths, what I'm not happy for is for them to be indoctrinated by christians while in school (even my bloody autocorrect keeps giving Christian a capital C!).

Because this isn't Mumbai or Kathmandu or Baghdad or Stockholm.
This country is a christian one - both historically and (arguably) by inclination.

Yes but harticus, (to go off at another, equally controversial tangent) I was smacked as a child, and I still think smacking is fundamentally wrong.

As it happens, I was really upset as a child by preachings about hell and heaven (in a non-faith school) and for a very long time I was worried that by not going to church, or not reading the bible, or not tithing, I was going to burn in hell and all because my parents were non believers. That's because at school God was presented as fact.

And when my parents told me not to worry, I tried to reason with them to go to church because "Well if there's a chance God exists, then we ought to make sure we're doing the right thing just in case". So that was the effect of prayer in school on me - not wanting to "find Jesus" but terror.

Thankfully I'm far more comfortable in my agnosticism now, but I really don't want my DD to go through the same thing.

what about before the Christians arrived and took over? It's perfectly possible to separate state and church (look at France for example). I don't want my children to only experience Christian festivals. DH takes them to church and does that side of things. Personally I'm agnostic and resent my children being told by and authority figure that god is definitely real and that he should worship it.

Christians do come in and talk about their faith.
I'm sure LGBT people come in and discuss LGBT.

But LGBT people do not expect prayers to their God.

I think that even the most militant of athetists are opposed to yobs attacking priests or anyone else. That is clearly wrong.

My son left primary school clutching two bibles. One of them had been given to him in year 3 and one of them had been given to him in year 5. As parents we had had no knowledge of this. My son explained to me that people from the local church had come to give his class RE lessons in year 5 and had given the children the bibles. I feel that parents should not have found this out 18 months after the event.

I feel that there needs to be clear guidelines on what community schools can and can't do.

niminypiminy - that link doesn't work. No one is talking about being 'sick' etc but more importantly religion/faith is a choice people as far as I can tell are saying they don't want those, in their view, false ideologies pushed on their children in school. A place they go to receive an education. Very different to some one who is gay (not a lifestyle choice) being persecuted for their sexuality.

Totally agree with OP, and holly I have signed your petition and shared it on Facebook. I am a student teacher & have to sit through so many brainwashing school assemblies. Teaching RE is important, but there is no need for 'act of worship'. In my experience lots of schools fudge it, one school I was on placement at never mentioned god in assemblies, the songs were fab & much more empowering

Disestablishmentarianism.
Until we live in a secular state, I don't suppose things will change.

We had a lay preacher who used to come to our school. It took him a long time to change what he said to "Christians believe, I believe" compared to when he usually implied it was true.

My old headteacher was also a Methodist preacher. You have to separate your beliefs from influencing young minds.

Why is it wrong to give a child a bible?

The St James version is a fantastically beautiful piece of literature.
People don't become religious by association with objects.
My son has a beautiful copy of the Koran from a friend in Oman. We have prayer flags from Nepal too.

Every school has the Goble
It's a Bible sent out by Gove. How kind of him.

Agreed

Yeah I know - fuck up on busy train - no edit button so I let it lie.

try again

There's so much ignorance about what Christians believe, and that sometimes leads parents to think that their children have been told things that perhaps they haven't (and whose child has not come home with garbled stories from time to time?). So I think that God created the cosmos and everything that is in it; I think that his endless giving of himself is what keeps us all existing; I think that the Big Bang happened; I think we evolved from single-cell organisms through the process of evolution. I don't take Genesis 1-2 literally, yet I think that God is our creator. That's a different position from what is normally termed creationism, and it's perfectly consonant with accepting the discoveries of science.

I am an atheist because of the religious instruction I received. Not quite what the ( lovely) nuns at my Catholic school or my CofE Sunday School teachers intended, but the more I found out about religion, the less credible I found it. Logic prevailed, thank god!

laura0806. You say that the children of non-believers are denied the opportunity to decide for themselves if not exposed to the worship. Are you as equally concerned that children do not have equal opportunity to worship the other 3'999 gods that humans worship, or ever have worshipped? Also children tend to adopt the religion that they are indoctrinated into which is why it is largely a geographical or familial phenomenon. As for the moral point. You think people without religion have less morals?

At boarding school - we had prayers in assembly. Then we had a Bible reading at lights out and we had to say prayers.

At weekends, we had a half hour service in the library. Every 3rd weekend we had to go to the cathedral for a service.

It was not a faith school. Just a traditonal school.

I worry that my niece isn't being exposed to any other ideas and beliefs: she comes from an evangelical Christian family, went to a CofE primary, and now goes to a very religiously-selective secondary. She's getting a very one-sided view of religion and hasn't been given the opportunity to explore the possibilities of non-belief. Why doesn't her school let the humanist society/secular society in to do regular assemblies?