to think that my DD has a right to a secular education

[Tinnitus]

Two years ago my DD came home to tell EXP and Me about the "true meaning of Christmas". We are both atheists and had purposely sought out a non religious school and so we were perplexed. We took every opportunity to explain that this story was just that, a story, not the literal truth.

Inevitably DD soon started on about the true meaning of Easter and so I made an appointment to see the headmistress of her school. By the time of the appointment I had learned from DD that it was a classroom helper who was feeding her this guff and not a teacher, and I felt a quiet word would suffice.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only was the helper indoctrinating DD, but the local evangelical church held monthly assemblies with the children. Indeed it turns out that every school in the country must be affiliated with a church of some type, but is not obliged to brand themselves thus. The head mistress was courteous and obliging and agreed to my request that the brainwashing of DD stop. I made no demands about her education other than She does not come home spouting twaddle.

Two years on and she is beginning to again to talk about Heaven, Hell, God and the Devil. But she has no idea who Adam and Eve were. When I "tactfully" quizzed her about this I discover a local CofE vicar has been regularly talking to the children about his faith, but without emphasizing that it is only his own opinion. Worse still, He has had my DD praying in class.

I have asked the school to live up to their earlier agreement as calmly as I could.

AIBU

There are many definitions of real, and you only fit some of them...

Raven Is not participating in assembly something your DS has chosen to do on his own or something you encouraged?

I invite you to consider my realness as a matter of faith, despite not seeing me or hearing me, and only having as evidence of my existence words on a screen.

You do know that is the cleverest thing I've heard (seen) you say (write), I'll get back to you.

Just as an aside Tinnitus, what will you do if she asks to join the Brownies because her friends go? Will that be different if she chooses to go rather than has to go?

All reality is borne from experience. My limited experience of you is that words appear on my screen under your heading.

As DP is also a MNer I have a control subject, I observe that DPs posts are readily apparent on my screen in a similar manner to yours. As you have passed the Turing test I can assume you are not a computer program. Thus I can postulate that your existence and realness are similar to DPs.

I can say that you are not DP and DP is not writing posts in your name as your posts have appeared in direct response to mine when DP is asleep or otherwise incapable of writing them.

therefore it follows that you are another person writing your own posts, on another computer, at an undetermined location. I can trust this theory until evidence to the contrary comes to light.

Before you say I sidestepped the task, remember that I have faith in reason and deduction, thus I now have believe in your existence and realness.

We all have Faith, just in different things.

I would suggest secular alternatives first, But if she wanted to go to get closer to god I would send her to church as it is cheaper.

I know where you are going with this and I would explain that it has a religious element to it so she can go prepared.

I suspect the Guides were quite relived, with a potty mouth like that!

Ah now I was brought up in a good republican household, so had no problem with doing my duty to God, but for serving the Queen we had the metaphorical fingers crosssed behind our backs...

I would be pretty appalled if my DC talked to me like that spacehopper! I wouldn't have it-I may be relaxed about them making up their own mind but they speak to people politely or not at all-as I do. If I was your mother I would have been able to give you plenty of answers-as vanitypear says, I expect the guides were relieved! The leaders give up their valuable spare time to give DCs a wide variety of experiences-why bother with attitudes like that!

vanitypear, Spacehopper5's mum couldn't answer because she speechless and wondered where it had all gone wrong

I didn't know there were any blokes in the Guides. But blokes might explain the language.

Glad to hear it spacehopper-it sounded as if you were more likely to be out mugging old ladies!

I didn't join the Guides either, I did 2 weeks and decided it wasn't for me. I have one DS who went right through the Scout movement and one who left Cubs and one who left at the end of Beavers.
I think that on the whole they are very good, they teach life skills that they don't get (on the whole)elsewhere. Duty to God and the Queen isn't central.

I bet Jesus didn't feature very much spacehopper. I was a Beaver leader and apart from the promise and the occasional church parade (voluntary) that was it.

Hi nappyaddict.

Ds participates in assembly. In fact, being a smartarse confident & articulate kid, he's frequently to the fore in presentations, readings etc.

He is more selective about participating in collective worship - currently, he's going through a gung ho Xtian phase. On at least one occasion that I know about (because his very Xtian form teacher thought it hilarious & recounted it to me), he declined to join in with a prayer because he 'wasn't a Xtian that week'.

To answer your question, it's definitely not at my instigation. I'm a convinced atheist, but I'm also a parent & a teacher: my single biggest objection to religious observance in school is that it undermines the teacher's authority, to the student's detriment.

It's a bit much, I always thought, to expect a young child to separate 'Mrs A talking bollocks about her imaginary friend - can safely be ignored' (when their parents are honest with them about thinking that it IS bollocks) from 'Mrs A teaching split digraphs. Better listen, this bit's the real deal'.

It caused me enormous conflict as a child - atheist parents, heavy RC Primary. The memories give me the creeping abdabs to this day, quite honestly.

So I've always tried to teach ds that he's part of the school community, he is expected to follow the rules & respect his teachers, & it's quite possible to think someone's wrong on one thing, to be polite about it, & not discount the rest of what they have to say.

& so far - early days - things are fine.

However - I still believe that NONE of this is appropriate or necessary. Mrs A should NOT have the right to teach ds or anyone else the tenets of her faith without clearly differentiating between that & the, well, real stuff. It's an abuse of authority for any teacher to do so IMO, & the fact that this is institutionalised is shameful.

Are they unsuccessful? Long waiting lists around here. Only unnsuccessful in attracting enough leaders, and that's not a God think I think, but a time thing.

The Scouting, and Guiding, movements were started with a religious ethos. It may be unnecessary, but so what? There are alternatives for those who really don't want the God thing. Which for my DC is about the same as school. Not in-your-face, but still there. But as I said before, we indoctrinate our DC to a much greater extent, so it doesn't bother us.

The point is spacehopper that they are very, very successful-the only difficulty is getting leaders. I only became a leader to get mine a place-names had to be on the list at birth!! No one else gives adventure so cheaply. It is no point them being more successful if they can't get leaders!
They don't pretend to be anything they are not-therefore if you don't agree you don't join, you can't say I like the activities but I want the ethos changed!
I now interview new Scout leaders-it always gets to the point in the interview where we have to ask how they stand on the 'promise to God' (oddly enough we never ask about duty to the Queen)-generally the answer is the same-they don't attend church but they are broadly Christian in outlook and don't have a problem with the odd church parade and general ethos. I think that is a fairly general English attitude. Obviously they don't put themselves forward if they can't do the duty to God-so it is only a small sample.