to think that some non-religious parents over-react just a teensy-weensy bit when their children are exposed to religion in the most benign form?

[SueBarooeeooeeooooo]

s'ok if I am. But threads complaining about this sort of thing are a regular MN feature, and I can't help thinking that some parents seem tremendously precious about it. We're Christians and it often comes up that not everyone believes the way we do, and I talk to my children about it and they wander off and scribble on the lounge walls again.

I've seen people complaining about Christian mums and tots groups, simple 'thankyou' prayers and christian charities. I am 100% ok with you bringing your children up atheist, theist, or chocolate-worshipping. Honestly, if I whipped myself up into a panic over every mention of different beliefs or none that my children encounter, I'd never get anything done.

(Please note, this is not a church schools whinge, I'm against selection on religious grounds.)

Ruty: while there are plenty of christians and christian groups who do not discriminate and do not, indeed, bother anyone else with their beliefs, it's having the framework in place that privileges superstition that people object to. If you accept that it's OK for schools to do more than teach children about different religions, then you make abuses of power by bigots very possible indeed. Because in a school where fluffy anglicanism is the order of the day, getting the kids to sing a hymn or two probably won't harm them any more than getting them to sing My Friend Billy has a Ten Foot Willy en masse would harm them. However, if the school (or the PTA) gets riddled with one of these loopy offshoots of a particular superstion that wants all women to cover their heads, or to segregate five year olds at play time, or teach creationism, then the fact that the law requires some brand of crap to be peddled to children makes it hard to p9lice exactly what crap is being peddled.

I have really enjoyed reading this thread - it has in the main been a balanced discussion and really interesting.

just one thing for now (have to dash out) madamez, where on earth would you get the idea that christianity teaches children to 'be ashamed of their bodies?' I do hope no one has ever had experience of this happening. It is certainly the very opposite to xn teaching.

Have lots more, but on way out, but thanks for interesting thread here.

I think the parents who've sent their children to church schools and then complain about prayers are very odd.

Is that what you meant?

"I think the parents who've sent their children to church schools and then complain about prayers are very odd."

NKF you are assuming that parents have a free choice about where to send their children
which is simply not true actually, in many areas there really isn't the "choice"

it also assumes that we should all just "put up" with religious discrimination in the education sphere without complaining.
I am not sure if it is within the Xian tradition to say put up or shut up (although I do hear it a lot on threads about religious schools!) but it certainly isn't within the atheist tradition
if I think something is wrong, I shall say it is thankyouverymuch

Well, I do understand that Harpsichord. But if I felt as strongly about a school's ethos as some people seem to feel about religion, I wouldn't send them. Some people talk about religious schools (the ones their children are attending) as if they hate it and everything it stands for. If I felt that strongly about something, I wouldn't let my children near it. So I kind of think they don't really mind that much. They just want to whinge.

madamez I have already accepted that making schools secular is probably a good thing, precisely because of the fact that quite a few of the people practising Christianity [as well as any other religion and athiesm as well] seem to be idiots. However I do feel some of the athiests here and elsewhere merely propel the ignorance around Christianity by some of their more deluded claims about it [shared by some nutty Evangelicals granted] and not understanding there is a wide variation of philosophical and theological debate within Christianity, and I suspect, within other religions too. Calling Christianity, for example, a 'superstition' and equal to believing in faires belies a total misunderstanding. If God is a metaphor for the unknown, inextricably linked and compatible with the unknown in science, and the Bible is a collection of stories of people trying to make sense of God in their own contexts, and if one chooses to follow Christ's teachings because his teachings on love, social justice and peace would transform our society [and this is why he tells us to follow them, not because otherwise we'll go to hell] then you cannot really reduce it to the level of fairies. Apologies for shockingly long sentence, which presumably no one will bother reading.

"They just want to whinge."
blimey, NKF thank goodness you are here to tell us what we really feel, as you clearly are so much better qualified to know that than we are .
I don't think you really do understand that some people have no real choice.
so they might be understandably upset about this.
I think that to describe this as "whinging" is very dismissive and intolerant tbh.

ruty (and others) - I think that many people on here when they make comments about their views of Christianity are speaking from their own experience of Christianity. so when they talk about intolerance of homosexuality, misogynist attitudes, hatred of their own bodies this isn't just blind prejudice, this is what they know about how they were taught and what they have heard in the course of their lives.

the reason why Christianity has such an influence over education is because this is a Christian country (as we often hear). well, fine, but in that case we all know what it is like to live in a Christian country and we are all equally well qualified to talk about what it is like to be educated under that system (if we were) and it really isn't an answer to say "Oh well the Xian church isn't really misogynistic" if it is someone's personal experience that that is the case.

the members of a religion do not have a monopoly on what that religion is and stands for, in a Xian country we all have a legitimate view.

that is one reason I do not make any statements about Islam (apart from that it isn't true) because I don't have personal experience of Muslim culture and education.

oh the Christian church is misogynistic HC of course! And homophobic. I am merely trying clarify what Christ's teachings were.

Oh an btw making schools secular won't necessarily stop some self righteous characters foisting their beliefs on children. If my ds comes home one day saying 'if I'm not good I'll go to hell' or equally 'grandpa must be a superstitious idiot because he has devoted his life to a homophobic misogynistic religion' I'll be angry.

The reason there are Christian schools is that faith groups have traditionally been interested in education. Interested to the extent of putting their own money in. I quite accept the argument that schools should be secular. Makes sense. But when they're not, if it offends and disgusts you to a considerable extent then surely you owe it to yourself and children to stay away from it. I guess I don't understand such lack of choice. I tolerate the message-free nonsense of my children's school winter show because although I think it's pitiful I think it does then no harm. If I thought it harmful, I wouldn't send them to that school.

Presumably all you atheists who think us religious folk are rather dim-witted simpletons who feed our children superstitious bullshit, don't tell your kids about Father Christmas, or the tooth fairy.

I find it laughable when people accuse me, a catholic, of being guillible and brainwashing my children to believe in crap, when they tell their kids about a fat man in red squeezing down every single child's chimney at Christmas to leave presents, or fairies to snatch away teeth from pillows and leave a coin in it's place.

Who's the brainwasher?

I am an aetheist and no I don't "do" Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy. Re the choice issue, I am lucky in that I live in a city, so I can choose the school my children go to, as there is a mix of faith and non-faith schools. There are plenty of areas where this is not so easy and choice is severely curtailed or impossible. And most of the issues raised here are about non-faith schools that turn out to have strong connections with religious fugures, or where individual teachers are giving a strong religious steer to the children in their classes (mostly early primary school).

NKF - you seem to be deliberately misunderstanding the points made by Madamez and Harpsichord about choice. Perhaps my experience of choice will enlighten you. For dd's primary school we applied to our 'catchment' school which was a normal state primary. She didn't get in because the school is over-subscribed. We were ALLOCATED a place at our next nearest school by the LEA. NO CHOICE. Luckily, the school is also within walking distance BUT it is a Church Voluntary Controlled school (ie the LEA still controls admissions). As such , there is a strong link with the local church and the vicar is on the board of govenors. So far there has not been sufficient influence to make me worry that my daughter is being brainwashed but if a more evangelical vicar came in that could change.
The only way we could send our child to a non-church school would be to drive her to the nearest state primary and even then, there would still be daily acts of worship anyway. I am not prepared to damage my child's health by denying her the walk to school in order to avoid the extra church influence at her current school.
Perhaps you could now agree that for some of us there really is no choice.
As for those who do deliberately apply to church schools when they could easily go somewhere else then you do have a point.

There does appear to be some stereotyping about religious folk. Contrary to popular beliefs we don't accept crap without question. In fact you are positively encouraged to question your own faith now and various groups are set up in Church to discuss and debate.

I don't tell my kids about FC or fairies or ghosts or anything else I cannot prove. The difference is that my faith is something I believe in through personal experience and research and soul-searching. So I teach my kids what I believe in myself. I don't teach them about fictional figures that I know are a crock of shite, like FC. Yet Christians are often unfairly attacked by atheists for doing this, yet no-one is criticised for telling their kids about FC.

Also I encourage my kids to find out about other religions and I don't shy away from the subject of atheism either. Ds's "godfather" is an athiest who played a special part in his christening by promising to be his moral guardian. The fact that he had no faith didn't figure, he is a moral and decent person who we thought was the ideal role-model for ds.

Although I'm catholic I send my kids to CofE state schools that aren't particularly religious because I want their religious education to happen at home, not at school.

And if you think that religion taught in school is teaching them bullshit, you should take a close look at how one-sided history is often taught. I wonder what they will tell our kids about the Iraq war for instance.

Stop being so blinded and look at the bigger picture. There is a lot of bias and ignorance in a lot of these posts.

Idling - I understand that for some people the local school is a church school. But if my local school was a scientology school (ie a belief system I have zero sympathy for) I wouldn't send my children there. I'd do anything to avoid it. Move, go private, home educate. Anything. Not a good set of choices but still choices. Sometimes on this board you hear from people who talk as if they regard Christianity the way I do Scientology but they're putting up with a CofE school.

tbh, not that many CofE schools are overtly religious.

You can opt out of most of the religious stuff. They give kids a broad range of religious education without telling them what to believe in themselves. I don't really see the problem. I have more of a problem with them telling my children about Father Christmas and encouraging that big fat lie.

There are so many double standards here, but hey, it's been the same for the last 2000 years. We can take it.

"Move, go private, home educate. Anything."
lucky you that you can afford to do any of those NKF. not everyone else is so lucky as to have those financial options.

Oh dear. It's become a church schools thread. Ah well, twas fun while it lasted..

I still don't get it. My kids are taught about Diwali and Buddhism which I don't believe in, yet I don't threaten to pull them out!

You are your child's biggest influence. There are loads of things you could object to about their education at school. The very fact that your child has to adhere to a dress code and line up at a whistle like dogs, or adhere to authority. Any of these things you could object to. Just get over it.

I think the point is that most parents don't object to them being taught about religions (and if they did would almost certainly not have the child at the school), what they object to is the child being made to conform with the religion.
Personally I am not that bothered about it, what I am bothered about is ds coming home singing hymms or saying prayers then asking me what they mean, I explain and he then gets all agro and says he won't say them because they are to do with god.
(I have posted about this and as expected got quite alot of "well don't send him there then", which didn't really help me to actually do something about addressing the problem. Yes I could not send him there, but it would mean a significant amount of travelling to a school that would not be CofE or oversubscribed, which given that dh isn't about much and I work would be pretty difficult to manage, not to mention that fact that I want him to go to the (only) village school).
The thread didn't originally start off as about schools (I have been following through out but haven't really posted), with regard to the M&T groups etc I can't see the problem, I personally wouldn't attend - end of, I certainly wouldn't attend then moan about it.

Rhubarb, I have no objection to my children being taught about any religion.
it is that I object to my children being required to take part in worship or religious acts e.g. praying.
as I said much earlier in the thread
imagine your child is told:

OK rhubarb junior, close your eyes and bow your head and put your hands together

and repeat after me

I believe there is no god
that the Christian religion is a liethat the bible is full of nonsense
and that there is no such thing as the afterlife
amen

Chasing Squirrels I am in a very similar position, although as it happens the one non-CofE that it would be vaguely possible to send dd1 to was soooo over-subscribed that no-one even bothered applying and hey presto elevn spare places

As to luck - there are probably people who think you are very lucky, Harpsichord but that isn't a valid argument against any points you choose to make. It sounds as if you had more choice than you perhaps realised.