To judge parents who do not even tell their children Easter is a religious festival

[Tuliptana]

I'm shocked that 12 out of 20 children in my childs class had no religious knowledge of the meaning of Good Friday or Easter Sunday for Christians.
All aged 9yrs old.

Whats bonkers is an atheist sending thier child to a catholic school and complaining they are teaching them about Christianity!! 😂.

No they're not, thank god.

Oh, I recall being on supply for a few weeks in a Primary school during the run up to Easter. During Holy Week we covered the events happening by writing it as a newspaper article and one bright girl called her newspaper News of the Jews, it must be 30 years ago now but I still chuckle about it!

I agree with you. You don't have to celebrate the Christian Easter, you don't have to believe in the resurrection of Christ and you can prefer the older pagan festival if you like.

But if you've grown up in country which still follows much of the Christian calendar, then not to know anything about Easter is indeed a sad state of affairs.

Bit different. They know its supposedly the birthday of Jesus Christ. They are aware that he was a real person, a very kind and charismatic leader who was killed horribly for standing up for his beliefs. Christmas is in remembrance of a real person, in much the same way as poppy day, remembering those that died for our freedom.

However, I'm not going into the religious side of it. There is no such thing as God, no more than there is an Easter Bunny or Santa or their various imaginary friends.

You assume that they are Christians.
Also easter was a pagan festival same as Christmas.
You may celebrate the Christian religious easter events but as an atheist we enjoy the eggs and holidays however we dont celebrate it.

Do Christians tell their kids that Easter celebrations predate Christianity in this country (Ostara) and that a lot of the iconography (rabbits, eggs etc) we still use now (eggs, rabbits etc) were included in that Pagan festival?

Or that the name Easter likely derives from the Anglo-Saxon Eastra (or Eostra), the Goddess of Spring and fertility?

Many of our Pagan celebrations, festivals and traditions have been 'Jesus washed' over the years, literally re-branded to be about Christianity, mostly due to huge involvement of the Church during the reign of many monarchs, so we have forgotten a lot of our actual roots and stories. Our ancestors were literally told they could keep their festivals as long as they made them about Jesus!

History exists. I won't pretend to my child that it doesn't.

Nothing wrong with British kids knowing about both the Christian story and our historical ones and, in my opinion, we shouldn't be telling them that one is 'right'.

If Jesus isn't God then he isn't a nice person.

It really isn't. It's lunar based and so shifts against the calendar month every year.
Sorry to ruin things with facts though.

You obviously live in a very different part of Ireland to me. I am in my 60's and know very few people who go to mass or who are practising catholics. My dc went to catholic schools as we had no choice. The primary was very much catholic light and did very little religion. The secondary taught comparative religions but did have an annual mass.

A lot of people aren't God... if you think you can't be a nice person without being God, you have bigger problems than MN can solve.

Tbf, with the benefit of hindsight, Jesus was probably mentally ill. He certainly wasn't God, nor was he the son of God. Was he a good leader? Clearly. Mad as a box of frogs but clearly quite charismatic.

I am surprised that an Irish school wouldn't spend time on it as my impression was that a lot more time was spent on RE than in England. Our non-faith school had the local vicar in and my Y3 child can talk through the basics.
This is despite the fact that we are atheist and the main value to us of Easter is the time off together as a family (and the chocolate).

I've no idea if my son does or doesn't know what easter means to some religious people. I certainly haven't told him, to us it means time off school and chocolate. We're not religious, so why should we care?

Intelligent people who take an interest in the world around them, even if they don't believe in it, sorry if that misses you out.

Depends on where you live. If it's Ireland, the vast majority of schools are catholic so you have no choice.

Jesus didn't give us that option.

Of course lots of people are nice who aren't god.

But if Jesus isn't god he is a maniac.

OP hasn’t actually clarified where she got this information from and how exactly was collected/counted.

Mine know it’s when “Jesus comes back to life” like a zombie. So fairly similar to Halloween just with an emphasis on chocolate in the shape of eggs and a giant bunny that has some unknown relevance

I'm not because most 9yr olds are just focused on the chocolate, dont you remember being a kid? 😄

Plus itll have been covered in RE so they definitely will have been taught about it. Sk they probably either didnt listen or forgot or just arent interested.

How did you find out though? Some kind of poll?

Are you judging the school as well as the parents? Because if 60% of 9 year olds in a Catholic school aren't aware of the religious background of this long weekend then surely the school are failing at least as much as you believe the parents are?

Was that all religions or just Christianity which in these 'inclusive' times is seen as an easy target for ridicule? Hopefully their school also ignores Divali etc..

Totally non-surprising that a Christian post is about 'judgment'.

Even though their book tells them to not do it.

It's not bonkers to not want state schools to be religious.

In a catholic school I would be more concerned about the quality of the teaching that has lead to children having so little understanding!

It might be a surprising state of affairs but there's really nothing sad about not knowing about made up nonsense from 2 thousand years ago.