AIBU to expect religion to be taught & practised at religious schools?

[KristinaM]

I am getting rather fed up with the threads that go........

" Although we are not Jewish we have chosen to send our son to the local Jewish school, its got a good ethos and great results. Now he has started we are very angry and upset to discover that they celebrate all the Jewish festivals and have acts of worship with a rabbi present.They even take them to the synagogue.

I don't want to have my child brainwashed with fairy stories.I only want him exposed to my particular beliefs. I am worried he will grow up and have a mind of his own and not believe the same as me. How can I get the school to change to suit me??"

Kristina - because people want to send their children to a good school at any cost, and often (though not always) the faith school is, in terms of academic performance and behaviour, the best in the area. People think that is worth a little pride-swallowing.

I don't think it's wrong to suggest to the child that they challenge what they hear and don't take everything at face value. It's all about teaching them how to think.

I didnt say they shoudl take it at face value. on teh contrary, i said they should listen and consider if they agreed

but i think its pretty rude and closed minded to tell a small child " dont listen to any views that mum and dad don't agree with"

thats not teaching critical thinking, is it?

Some people don't have much choice. If it is yur local school, or if all your local schools are religious then what can you do but send your child there? There seem to be a much larger amount of schools than there are practicing people of pretty much any faith, and the government seem to wish to press on with opening more and more of them. Also small children do believe what their teachers tell them, which can be highly irritating! My children go to a non religious school, but they still come home with strange ideas about how the world came to be etc. On the other hand if there is a choice and you decide to send your child to an overtly religious school, then I think that's another matter,

I don't need to post too much...UnquietDad has said what I'd have done almost exactly (HOW to think not WHAT to think etc.) and that diagram is just great.

I fork out for school in part because ALL the nearby schools are CofE or Catholic...no choice in state sector. DDs class has children from Muslim and Hindu families in it I'm delighted to say.

I have to admit to getting quite annoyed in DDs class assembly last year which was on one of their science topics (weather) and then totally out of context on the end theres the obligatory hymn. I'd not come across it before but its a real memetic stinker:

Who put the colours in the rainbow?
Who put the salt into the sea
(more similar prettily banal lines...)
and then this downright lying line:
It surely can't be chance
...before suprise suprise giving God all the credit. (didn't ask who put the parasitic wasp in the larvae. odd oversight)

yeah, I know, none of the kids will have even noticed that. So... why bother singing the blumming thing in the first place?

arggggghhhhhh

nooka - if thats the case, why don't parenst just teach their child their own beliefs at home, rather than try to get the religious school to change? Surely the ethos is part of the reason they sent their kids there in teh first place?

My DD has sung that song as well. I've gritted my teeth and tried to hope she didn't take it too literally.

Because, of course, it uses the well-known creationist misunderstanding of the processes of evolution - dismissing it as "chance". Evolutionary scientists don't believe in "chance" either - creationists just like to think they do because it's easier than arguing with the actual theory!

I don't know quite what we'd have done if we hadn't been able to pay for private school to escape from the over-represntation of faith schools round here.

why don't we try putting this one to music?

Who is a jealous and vengeful God?
Who commits genocide with a great big flood?
Who requires human sacrifice?
Who is pretty much OK with slavery and child beating?

I know it doesn't rhyme, but I am working on it.

We pay for private so that we can get proper faith school - a real ethos that underlies all activities, chapel, prayer etc.

oh no unquietdada - i can see why you are worried! your kids are bound to become Christian now, if they have sung that song

well you have to do what we have had to do: grin and bear it
look at me grinning
I thought I might start smuggling copies of the God Delusion into the school library.

I guess we just have diffenert views - i dont mind my children being exposed to different views and learning about other faiths. I woudl like them to have teh oppertunity to think things through for themsleves and not have to automatically acept what i believe

Kristina, I was talking about people who had no choice... For those that do, well yes tough really, but I do think it is problematic. Oh, and if you are an aetheist, there are no "beliefs" to teach, and it is difficult not to undermine the teacher if she has told your offspring that people were made by god and you wish for your children to understand evolution. Whilst I agree with my dh's sentiment when he said that what the teacher had said was "a load of fetid dingo's kidneys" personally I just would have rather she hadn't said that people didn't come from monkeys, which is what ds relayed to us. I don't send my children to school to be pedled myths, but unfortunatly even at non religious schools it happens.

"but i think its pretty rude and closed minded to tell a small child " dont listen to any views that mum and dad don't agree with"

thats not teaching critical thinking, is it?"

Not quite as small minded as sending your child to a faith school to make sure she or he is thoroughly indoctrinated and taught one religion as truth.

Oh, and I don't thik that anyone has said that they don't want their children to be educated about other faiths - it's the indoctrination that we object to! Oh, and the awful songs too - although nothing beats "Ave Maria" in the awfulness stakes, not even the happy clappy drivel (think dirge, and you have it).

Of course, you could just be a madcrazyfundy and remove your children altogether so that they don't have to be exposed to things you don't approve of for them.

"I've always thought that, rather than teaching children what to think, we are better off teaching them how to think - using critical methods, examining the evidence, putting theories to the test and so on. "

I totally agree with this. But I would also say that rather than telling children what to believe, we are better off challenging them to work out for themselves what they believe.

And I don't think you can do that simply by reading it in a textbook. No-one could ever understand what religion is about just by reading bare facts about what other people believe. Just as no-one would ever understand what football was really "about" without actually watching a football match, sensing the atmosphere, seeing how it affects the people that are there. Because just like sport, religion is about so much more than just knowing the rules. You "have to be there."

Of course everyone still has to make up their own mind whether the whole thing is a load of cobblers or not. But at least once they have joined in, they are in a position to do so.

i think religion should be taught as a subject at school, much the same as history. perhaps it shoudl be a part fo history... but holding services and teaching it all as tho its true?

i just wish there were more (any???) schools where they dont do this.

do think tis daft to deliberately send kids to a religious school, then complain about the religiousness tho.

havnt read thread, which is tres lazy of me, i know. soz.

Kristina, no, me neither and good job too because all children will learn about other religions in RE. and also because all the schools local to me are faith schools. so I have absiolutely no choice.
Why do they need to be indoctrinated i.e. taught that one faith is true, as part of a state funded education?
Would you send your child to a Muslim school? Would you mind that your child took part in acts of worship every day? sang Muslim songs praising Allah and setting out the tenets of Islam?

I didn't think Muslims had religious songs, do they?

As far as songs are concerned, I totally agree that it is dodgy to ask children to sing songs in which they are expressing a faith they don't have. There are plenty of Christian songs which express elements of Christian belief without requiring the singer to claim it for their own.

we are all being remarkably civil, nappies. even tho we dont all agree. which is as it shoudl be of course [smirk]

science teacher maybe you could use your imagination?

anyway, yes Muslims have religious songs or at least some Muslims do.