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??"

Our primary school was like this too. It wasn't a faith school, but it had a daily "act of Christian worship" as did nearly all schools at that time (late 70s). We had a little talk from the Head and we sang hymns ith the words up on slides - usually trite shite like "The ink is black/ The page is white" (aaaaaaaagh!!!) but sometimes more tuneful and trad stuff like "O Jesus I Have Promised" or "Lord Of All Hopefulness". (The old hymns are the best things about Christianity for me!)

It was only as a secondary school kid that I actually started to question any of this. I think what had always got me puzzled, even as a primary school pupil, was the idea that "Heaven" was somewhere up in the sky and yet everything I had been taught about cosmology contradicted this!

i suppose all i can say to any concerned parent is that my experience at secondary school was much better, if you feel your child is being 'force fed' a particular religion because you have had a limited choice of schools, education becomes much broader at secodary school.
you get to go into far more depth and by then hopefully get to have some very interesting and challenging debates with your RE teacher, and peers like i did. i took RE at gcse and i can honestly say it satisfied need at the time, to explore other ppl's POV.

Yeah UQD, the one thing that sucks about being an atheist is no hymns .I've always thought Huxley's Arch Community Songster of Canterbury or whatever it was in Brave New World sounded like the one attractive facet of his dystopia.

No you are not being unreasonable. And I am not being unreasonable to expect religion Not be taught and practiced at an non-faith State school!

Sadly, neither of us seem to be getting what we want!

my infants and primary schools were both c of e (they were nearest and besides, all schools were, pretty much) and aside from a short phase of competition with a girl called dorothy about who was more religious - we wanted to be nuns and thought having a bible at home meant we were in line. i didnt, but i lied quite assuredly and she believed me haha. the only reason for the nun approach was we thought it was our best chance of getting out of our current school and into another as mr harvey and miss stringer were scary evil types... but i digress...
point is, that despite all the bible stories and hymns etc, i never bought any of it for a second. i wasnt anti it, but i did always think they were just slightly dull stories and didnt occur to me that you could actually really accept it as fact.
that may have been down to knowing my parents had no belief in it all. is what im hoping will be enough to keep my sons's heads out of any religious clouds.

is it really a part of the cirriculam??? i never knew that.... dont know if i like that.....

but seeker...do you not think that kids should recieve unbias RE? for example i dont follow any religion, but i like that fat that i understand why some ppl do

My parents are practicing Christians and I went to a church school but I am agnostic and a scientist. Why do some parents think that their children are so susceptible to brainwashing at school? I am fairly confident that all the pagans on mumsnet didn't go to pagan school.

I enjoy church services although I am not a believer, I love the hymns and find prayer soothing and enriching. I am glad that my child is getting the chance to experience christian worship as it is so much a part of British culture. I am confident he will be able to make up his own mind about what he believes.

I do think that state schools should be non religious though. Religion should be taught at home and/or church.

i disagree there, i think religions should be taught in school, in a unbias way, i think it helps ppl develop social and cultural tolerance. i see this when i talk to my IL , they are so quick to judge islamic views and apparnt way of life....the truth is they know very little about the islamic faith as they have never been educated about it. like i say i dont follow a religion but at i am capable of seeing other ppl's view point, wiithout making snap judgements on subjects i know little about.

I don't think my child will be susceptible to brainwashing.

But there has to be some reason why such a large proportion of the UK population ticks the Christian box on a census when they really arent. And primary school meme infection is probably one element of this.

I think it's because people think they have to tick something and don't realise they aren't obliged to do so, and so they tick the religion they grew up with, or which their parents are/were.

I've been known to put "C of E" myself, as it's the easiest answer and is the only form of church in which I have ever set foot (aside from the two weddings I've been to in a Catholic church and one in a Hindu temple). These days, I'd leave it blank or even cross it out.

That's where they get figures like 70% of people being Christian, which just don't sit with the 1-2 million who attend church every week. That may be a lot - it's about the same as the number of people who go to football - but it's still only 3.3 percent at most.

A lot of people have their baby christened though which must indicate some sort of belief. Religion is not necessarily a bad thing, or an infection, people who have a faith apparantly live longer.

There is a huge difference between RE as a lesson and religious practice. For example, my ds is 6. He comes home from school with all sorts of interesting facts about other faiths, and little homlies about religions tolerance - and I think that's brilliant. What I don't like is that he also talks about God and Jesus being his son and good people going to heaven and singing Chisitian hymns. Christianity is given a completely different emphasis to other faiths - "this is what lots of other people believe - this is what we believe" Well, actually, we don't! I think they should be taught about all faiths impartially.

this is about non religious assemblies in case anyone's interested I have sent it to the Head of our school and have so far been men with what my mum would call a "speaking silence"

Oh, come on, pigleto, most people I know who have had their baby christened have done it so they know they will stand a better chance of getting into a church school.

Is there any independent scientific evidence for the "religious people live longer" claim?

Religious people don't live longer - it just feels that way!

Sorry - I've lowered the tone. I'll go and sit on the naughty step.

ive actually not given in to hypocritical family members on both sides- why dont you have him christened ?they all say. the answer to me is so clear, because im not religious! and when was the last time any of them attended church? um oh yeah- never, unless its for a wedding or such like- that in my view is hypocritical, u cant just pick and choose.

There certainly seems to be a special form of "slow time" during Catholic weddings.

Don't most people have a christening because its a nice ceremony and we haven't come up with good secular alternative? I really doubt most people adhere to the vows they make (or even understand them.)

I don't know the stats but I bet church weddings have gone down now that people can have the ceremony in a nice venue instead of registry office being the only option.

Yes, you are probably right. I haven't been to many church weddings recently - most have been in nice hotels.

One thing I do envy religious types for is their immeddiate access to a network. My religious friends seem to organise everything - baby clothes, babysitting, partes, pubs, trips away - through church. Us non-faith types have to create our own through other means!

UQD... yeah. I was brought up in a very Christian family and I really do miss all that side of it. God was always a figment of my imagination but my ex-social circle wasnt

Personally, I think anything that gives people more choice can't be a bad thing. If you really don't like religion then don't choose a religious school for your child. If you don't want to pay fees, don't choose an independent school for your child. The point is these choices are available to you should you want to take them up. Just because you don't want (or like) them surely should not mean that everyone else should not be allowed to have them either.

I had my children Christened for the following reasons:
I was brought up a Catholic but do not now consider myself to be religious - not Atheist just hate the destructive and divisive nature of religion.
I am grateful to have been shown a faith as although I have opted out, I doubt I would ever have opted "in" to any religion from a cold start (I have never met anyone who has done this, I have only met people who opt out or change religion).
I try and take my children to various different churches and services from time to time (we are like religion tourists!). I also sentmy sons to C of E primary school (they have left now) Its religious status was incidental - it was the school we liked the most (small and friendly) and it also happened to be the closest.
Just because I don't feel an affinity with a particular religion does not mean that any of my 4 children will not.
Also it is nice to have a party for family and close friends.