to be completely horrified and insulted to see ashes on ds1's forehead?

[Foz]

my 5 year old DS1 came home from school on Ash Wednesday with ash on his forehead after his community school (not C of E) took him to Church, let the vicar give a semon to him all about Jesus/the need to pray/drinking wine is drinking the blood of Christ/stale bread is the body of Christ/Jesus dying for my son's sins/resurection/etc., then put the ash on his forehead (he did volunteer though he didn't know where he was, what they were going to do or what it meant).

Background- I was raised and practiced Jew for 30 years. Now both my husband and I are atheists. I grew up in the states where this would never be allowed within non religious schools. I fully appreciate there are many things wrong with the states but with my background I was not prepared for this.

My concerns -

1. I do not agree with collective worship in a 'broadly Christian way' that is a state requirement. It is discriminatory, insulting and unbelievable that the school should take on the role of spiritual leader for my child 5 days a week.
2. My only recourse is to exclude him which makes my son feel like something is wrong with him. How fair is that! What choice do I have?
3. Taking my son at 5 and allowing a vicar to talk to the children about Christianity without explaining faith and that this is what Christians' believe (not universal fact) is irresponsible and a form of indoctrination. This was NOT part of collective worship and how could the school not think to inform the parents before going?
4. This is all based on a Victorian law section 70 and schedule 20 which was created in Victorian times when more than 95% of the British population were practising Christians. Now less than 8% are practising - should this law still be in practice?

Well, at least your child is not taught that the devil lives in a small red house in the forest behind the school, and is limp.

QS sounds intriguing?

We have a loony teacher who is going on about mythical creatures, how they live in rocks by the school, lakes in the forest, monsters in the attic, etc. Long winded, long story, my son is scared senseless. Much worse than the odd trip to Church I think.

LOL Now that would be worse. My son wouldn't sleep with the light out ever again. Poor you!

Sorry, I know it must be frustrating but that is funny

Limp?

Weird.

lunamoon I see what you're getting at, but healthy eating, hygeine and sex education aren't mumbo jumbo...

I also think a lot of veggie/vegan parents would go ballistic if their children were fed eg offal at school, and rightly so.

Ah, we had one of those once (loony teachers that is). In need of fast retirement I think. Sorry your poor ds is the recipient.

ah, that is why my son is now insisting on having his bedside lamp lit...

grrr

And that's the problem really in a nutshell.

Children believe what their teachers tell them. So we need to keep a pretty close eye on what their teachers are telling them...

It must be so tempting to direct the little ones gently towards whatever your personal beliefs are...

I'm a bit frightened now about the red house down the road...

Shambolic,Nooka,Quint- since you all seem like insomniacs like me what are you thoughts about excluding a child from assembly? I know it is different based on the temperment of the child etc.
I might start a thread about this but I'm worried the responses will be more emotional than help me to understand this decision. I feel a bit lost as I don't really know what other religious things happen in the British schools.

well, my son went to a roman catholic school before. he refused to go to assembly the first few months, so in a way excused himself. He was in the library, helping stacking books. Then he became very religious. But dh has become an atheist due to the new pope, and is now trying very hard to instill Star Wars and The Force in our son instead. We are not the best people to ask....

you so make me laugh. May the force be with you!!

Why did he not want to go in the beginning (if you don't mind)

I'm very tired so going in a mo...

And it's all academic for me as DD is only 18mo.

If I was in your shoes, and this is my total honest answer, I probably wouldn't exclude them from assembly. That is the main school togetherness start to the day, every day, and where all the news is given.

Do they do religion a lot in assembly? You need to find out. Most community schools I thought did a vague christain story ie let's all be nice to each other, without any actual prayers or what have you. If so, no problem really.

If they have to say their prayers then that's different...

I would exclude from going on visits which involved acts of worship I think. Or say I needed advance notice to decide based on what was going to happen and so that I could prime DD.

I think he was scared of Father. He was quite in awe of him, I think. He also felt the pressure of sitting still and being attentive so long. The school had no issue letting him be excused.

I think you should take a child's fear seriously. I had a cross stitch of a benign angel above my bed as a child, it terrified me, my mum had to remove it. The angel was depicted as blessing two children. But it had wings, and I knew real people dont have wings, so it was scary.

Thanks Shambolic. I understand your point. We are booked in to observe 2 assemblies when we return from break, though we are worried from what we have heard.

night.

I agree with Shambolic. My sons new school does class assemblies every morning. It does not have religion, only "good ethics" which you really find in most belief systems, and also outside religion. News, "tell us if you did something special" and a massage session where the children rub eachothers shoulders and say nice things.

I am also off to bed. Good night. I hope you get some reassurance next week.

Thanks Quintessential.I'm off to bed. Good luck with the crazy teacher. Maybe someone needs to confiscate her little bag of pills.

night.

I find it very difficult as my local primary schools are all church schools or DD is out of catchement. So I am in a real quandry.

The thing is that I believe the core message of christianty is a pretty good message - and that is the bit the kiddies get. The good samaritan, do unto others as you would have done unto you, love thy neighbour etc. All good stuff.

The problem is I just don't believe in god at all, and so the worshippy side of it leaves me utterly cold. I just find it bizarre.

When it comes down to it I suspect that what the children learn at home will outweigh school, unless it is a really full on school...

Then again I went to an extremely full on school and am an athiest - a lot of it is down to personality.

Bottom line - I am against faith schools funded by the state on principle, but in practice I would not remove DD from essential parts of school life on the basis of my athiesm, if she ended up at a school where it turned out they were doing a bit of religion...

Night all! Foz I hope the assemblies are acceptable to you and then you can all relax...

I'd go in and have a chat with the head and find out what sort of things are likely to happen so that you can plan ahead. It probably is just the church visits etc that you might wish to avoid, and if you know about them you can mange them better I expect.

i tend to get round the pray bit in assemblies by telling my children no they dont have to join in the pray ,But I do expect them to sit quitely while others do as a matterof respect and would apply this rule where ever they are when people pray of any faith

Spot on Riven! It is only when it gets banned that you have problems. The communists tried their best to stamp it out and failed miserably-if they had encouraged it I daresay the churches would be empty!!

Would all the people on this thread who think that people are being unreasonable not to want their children to take part in Christian worship at school be perfectly happy for their child to take part in a Black Mass at school? After all, home influences are far more important, it will go over their heads and anyway they will have forgotten about it by next week........

Riven's got a point there

Perhaps every child should given a bible and encouraged to read it. That's how I became an atheist. I got to see all the parts that are never read out in church.

Really though as someone touched on earlier, who would be happy if in the name of education each child was given some pork to eat so they'd know what it was like?

It would be a close thing whether the school was burned down by the vegetarians, the jews or the muslims.

Can you imagine anyone on here saying "well you can teach them meat/pork is wrong when they are home"? I think not.

Of course it would be fine to teach them that some people eat pork, but to make them participate is wrong.

The whole 'withdrawing from assembly' thing is a cheap trick. Assembly includes other things which can be important. So in effect if you refuse to worship the god of the headmaster you will be punished by not allowing you to join in with those.

And of course it's not just confined to assembly.