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

Haven't read the whole thread but the sticking point in separating education and religion is that 1/3 of the schools in the country were bequested to the LEAs on the condition that they retained their religious character.So the state would have to find sites for ,and fund the building of thousands and thousands of new schools.

Iwould ban secularism and education too for that matter!

canucktraveler,

"Unquietdad and BlueGreen All I can say is Halleleujah! Some people who talk sense"

Halleleujah??

Oh and I would ban daughters too!

FWIW, I think it would be fairer if education was secular, but I can live with the current system.

OK Tinnitus, have read the thread, and still suggest you are brainwashing your dd as much as her Christian based assemblies are.

To tell her that there isn't a God is imposing your beliefs on her, not providing her an objective view. For all you know there may well be a god and you are the one who is deluded.

Personally, I am an atheist, and made this choice myself, I did however have a Christian upbringing, went to church every week and attended a C of E school. I think it was this involvement with Christianity, and the freedom to learn about and question peoples beliefs which allowed me to make my own choice. Besides which, it also stood me in good moral stead for the rest of my life- whether you believe in a God or not, many of the aspects of christian worship allow you to tap into a spirituality which is hard to find without some belief in a greater good. (especially for a small child)

I have also chosen to send my daughter to a church school, I think the worship aspect is good, it gives her a greater sense of belonging and I know that when she is old enough she will make up her own mind like I did.

My point exactly onebadbaby-trust your DC-they can reason for themselves-they don't need you telling them your ideas all the time, they learn by your example.

@ onebadbaby and picesmoon

OK. here is a excerpt from one of my earlier posts that you must have missed.

Some of you are pointing out that I'm guilty of being as bad as any religious parent by insisting DD ONLY hear my thoughts on the subject. You are wrong of course, I have never imposed my views, or even discussed my beliefs with DD.DD is seven and has as yet failed to enquire spontaneously about the origins of creation, preferring to simply play with her dolls house and friends.

My point is that for another adult to take it upon themselves to fill her head, against my explicit wishes, is simply wrong. When she grows up she can do and think as she pleases, and I will then encourage her to think about these issues. For now I would rather she stick to the dolls house and enjoy being seven.

If you still feel I'm imposing my world view on her please explain HOW?.

You are imposing your views if you censor opposing views. I would expect that if your DD has asked no questions and is happy playing with her friends that she would find the whole subject boring and so no one would 'fill her head'. I doubt whether she could give a detailed account of the assembly by the end of the day. I have asked children what it was about immediatly afterwards and half of them haven't a clue! My own DCs never told me a single thing about assemblies. I took my DCs to church and they went into Sunday School-my DS2 was younger than your DD when he told me that he didn't believe in God. He made up his own mind-he didn't have his head filled. He hasn't been to church since. I think he was a bit young, but insisting that a DC goes to church when he doesn't want to is hardly going to encourage him! I don't think they are 'empty vessels' for me or anyone else to fill.
People who want to overhaul the schools have no idea of history-why the schools are the way they are-the education acts or the constitution of the country.You need to start with Henry V111!! Church and State have to separate before that happens.

The best primary schools are often faith schools because of the ethos. It seems a bit strange to say that you want your DC to go but you don't want it to be a faith school-it would no longer be the same school! Killing the goose that lays the golden egg!

It has nothing to do with his wives-it is to do with being the Head of the C of E and the Head of State. Cof E is the state religion. They are state schools. Before you get rid of collective worship you have to have disestablishmentarianism. Before education was compulsory the church ran schools. In 1870, when it became compulsory, board schools filled in the gaps.I don't expect that the state could afford to take over all the church schools, or the church schools would go over entirely to church funding where there is the support and new schools would have to be built. I am a bit hazy on the subject, but the government can't just say 'there will be no faith schools and no collective worship in non denominational schools'-it is far, far wider than that.

You said they were the best schools-I assumed that you wanted the best for your DC and that because the best was faith ,which you didn't want, you wanted them to change as they were discriminating against you. If they are a church school and paying a lot of money towards them I think it only fair that they give first choice to those who want the whole ethos-not those who want to 'cherry pick'the bits that suit them.

I am off to bed but I still don't understand why your DC has to think the way that you think-WHY? Mine think entirely differently on lots of subjects and it doesn't bother me-I don't own them. I believe in God and they don't -so what?!! I wouldn't care if it was the other way around.They are lovely, caring DSs that anyone could be proud of-their thoughts are their own.

It doesn't spacehopper, but people need to take the link that I posted much earlier and join the secular society and fight for it-if they expect the government to change things before they separate church from state they are doomed to disappointment.

@ Picesmoon

This will be about the tenth time I've had to say this, I AM NOT FILLING MY DDS HEAD WITH ANY BELIEF STRUCTURE OF FAITH.

You seem to think that because I have one set of principles and beliefs, I must let all comers fill DDs head with whatever takes their fancy. thats utter nonsense.

Also, DD goes to this school because me and EXP believed that non affiliated meant secular, on discovering our mistake, we received an assurance from the headmistress that DD would not be taught religion as fact. all I want is for them to keep to that promise.

Your historical argument is way off subject, remember it was the American style evangelists who were coming in first not the CofE vicar. and I think Henry VIII would have beheaded them too.

Tinnitus, YANBU.

I am shocked to hear that all schools have to be affiliated with a church, is that really true? I had no idea that was the case with ds's school, for example, though i knew about the 'act of Christian worship' etc etc as it was a huge issue when the 'Christian' bit was introduced in 1988 or thereabouts.

Am also VERY shocked at the idea of a local evangelical church running assemblies every MONTH. TBH I would be pretty sad to find any outside agency regularly running assemblies at any school, as assemblies at their best should capture and direct the school's character IMO, rather than try to instil a character from outside.

I think your best bet is to find a sympathetic governor - e.g. the governor responsible for RE, and/or the governor who chairs any Curriculum committee. At worst you will find it is the governors who are inspiring some of this stuff, possibly without having thought it through very much ('oh the vicar is such a lovely (wo)man' etc) in which case you might want to think about girding some loins and getting on to the governing body?

though PS the most comforting thing is what CheerfulYank says - school religion seems to inoculate British people against ever taking it up themselves.

Spacehopper - 6 wives, 2 beheaded including the one who caused the schism from the RC church and her death caused him to essentially abandon his more Lutheran principles.

Ironically he still considered himself Catholic and persecuted Protestants and Catholics. It has been argued that far more significant than his declaration that he was head of the church was his decision to translate the bible and have it accessible in every church. It was actually his sons regents who imposed protestantism on the country and the Elizabeth I who restored some semblance of order after the reintroduction of catholicism by Mary. So very complicated but I'm wandering off topic.

Henry 8 has a lot to answer for - he did effectively legalise divorce in this country too - but he didn't write the education acts, which were laid down when non-conformist Christian denominations were gaining in popularity and non-CofE local schools were springing up but many people were still broadly Christian. Before that the majority of education was done in conjunction with the church - Sunday Schools teaching writing etc.

Whilst I agree church and state should be more distinct there is a long, long way to go before complete separation of powers is achieved and it would require a drastic overhaul of almost every system and law and potentially destroy many traditions of the country. Look at how difficult it was to move the law lords out of the house of lords and into the supreme court to stop the house of lords being the final court of appeal. Then quadruple it.

I don't think there's any reason beyond tradition to have religion in schools but it depends how much tradition matters. While we still have a state religion state schools should conform to the law but that doesn't include the issues faced by the OP of RI by stealth. I would be very opposed to abolishing state faith schools including Christian, Jewish and Islamic schools, not simply because they were ceded to state control under certain conditions but because they do have a good ethos and are open to those not of that religion, even if te selection is weighted in favour if practising members.

Would this argument take place if it were about another country which still has a State religion and insists on collective worship?

government response to the last petition

I actually came here to post something relevant not waffle on about Henry 8 but then I got sidetracked.

No one has told me why they think their DC has to think the same as them.
My DH and I have very different views, we are really the attraction of opposites, therefore it would be impossible for DCs to follow us both. My parents had very different views, my brothers have different views again-I would say that one is on the lunatic fringe, but I still love him! My FIL has been a regular church goer all his life but my MIL never sets foot in one. All this makes life interesting! I spent hours debating things with my family when I was young, with my father in particular when I was a teenager.
'Religion is a load of Medieval shite' is a very extreme view and I would be very disappointed in my DC if he just said 'yes mummy,' with no questions and no views of his own. I would worry that anyone else could come along and fill his head if he is so malleable to parental suggestion.

I accept that you are not indoctrinating your DC Tinnitus-in fact I had forgotten the beginning of the post. If it is an American evangelist coming in, then YANBU.
I must have sat through literally hundreds of school assemblies and I think that they are a sure way to turn your child off-particularly some taken by vicars! Only one has made me uncomfortable, in fact it is the only one that sticks in my mind, and it was taken by a visiting American evangelical minister-thankfully as a one off.
I was teaching in a church school at the time and we had a special assembly. He upset me at the start by telling the children that his 3yr old daughter 'had given herself to Jesus' -utter twaddle-a child that age is just following daddy. He then went on to say that they could give themselves to Jesus-they were all much too young IMO. The worst part was that it was this time of year and he went into the crucifixion in graphic detail -I had never really thought about it, but if you do it is horrific! I think that the idea was that we were supposed to talk about it back in class-I was a young teacher and felt it was completely wrong so chickened out completely and told them to get out their maths books and we just ignored it. Now that I am much older and a mother, I think I failed them in not giving an alternate view or protesting to the Head.
So YANBU. They won't get any of that from a C of E vicar-I went to Sunday School from the age of 4 yrs and no one had forced me to think of the physical suffering of crucifixion. Your average school assembly will turn most children off-but beware of American evangelists.

'though PS the most comforting thing is what CheerfulYank says - school religion seems to inoculate British people against ever taking it up themselves. '

Absolutely true!