withdrawal from RE/Collective worship AND Gifted/Talented

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Hello.

I have searched this forum but have been unable to find a specific discussion on the experience parent have had when withdrawing their children from RE and Collective Worship.

We are Jewish Humanist (Atheist) and I object to my son being involved with prayers or any kind or being in a christmas play- nativity involvement is specifically out of the question.

We are also American so my husband and I never had to deal with feelings of exclusion regarding the above issues because religion is not allowed in public schools YEY! We don't really understand the RE system and my first child is just turning 4.

His school has assembly every morning. From what I understand, it is usually of an ethical theme which is terrific, yet it follows by a prayer at the end and then once a week there are hymns and once a week there are relgious plays of a nature which has not yet been made specifically clear or to me.

The school headmistress has not offered any solutions or plans except to say we'll deal with it. This last school year, my son was taken out from practicing for school christmas songs but I know he felt sad about being separated from friends as he was only brought into another room to play with playdough and overheard everyone but him practicing. I'm not sure that overhearing practcing is consistenet with honoring re withdrawal rights. Also as the school is a christian private school run by cognate, I'm not sure if they have the ability to do what they want vs a state school.

My initial thought is to just bring my son to school 15 minutes "late" each morning so he won't even know what he is missing - of course if there is an awards day or something I don't know how this would be handled. The headmistress really gave me the indiciation that in circumstances like this, she wouldn't know what to do either- yet I think the school has a duty to come up with some accomodations doesn't it? In regards to being "late" it was communicated to me that my son might in future be marked "late" which would interfere with the attendance policy.. don't know what to do about this.

Finally, on top of it all, my son is listed as gifted for reading and math. This past school year I was just thrilled because the wonderful year 2 teacher met with him once a week and encouraged him. I thought that just maybe,. if the school is going to give support here, that they do so when my son would otherwise be in RE or collective worship as he might not feel excluded specifically. I get the feeling that while that one teacher was thrilled to offer up her time, the headmistress really doesn't want to ask her staff to sit with my son and would rather pressure us to confirm or leave. We are not the type to just bow under pressure-

SO! With all of the above in mind- any tips? What has your experience dealing with withdrawal been like? How to deal with a headmistress or ensure your rights are enforced?

Thanks so much.

Please don't compare the faith issue with exclusion due to SN whendidyoulast. Whilst in mainstream my son was excluded from assemblies & trips & classes because of his disability. It's not remotely the same position my younger children who have atheist parents but are in a Christian school are in. And their experiences are not the ones their elder brother had.

saintly, if the whole school is participating in an activity that you can't join in because of your faith or lack of it, then you are being excluded.

Teachers and schools are told to be inclusive in all other areas of school life.

You cannot exclude or target specific lessons at particular ethnic groups or faiths or anything else so why should you be able to do it in assemblies or other acts of worship?

And no Mumsnetter would ever say oh you should just put up with it because that's the way things are if children were being excluded for any other reason.

I must say I find the pressure to conform and absolute lack of support for non-conformism, even though many have said it's not right, surprising.

Except that 80% of the people in the room are probably either a different religion or have atheist or agnostic parents. It is nothing like the horrendous exclusion my severely autistic son went through in mainstream & to suggest it is is to minimise what he experienced.

I write as an atheist parent with children in a Christian school.

Exclusion is exclusion saintly. I'm not saying there aren't degrees of seriousness but it's all wrong.

Schools should cater for the beliefs and backgrounds and needs of ALL of their pupils and not target particular events at one particular faith.

And if 80% don't share that faith and therefore the school is providing an activity that is only relevant for 20%, it's even more absurd surely?

OFSTED would wipe the floor with a school that was targeting a particular lesson at only 20% and rightly so.

A school will be in trouble with Ofsted if they have no spiritual provision for pupils.

you can not exercise your right to withdraw from RE or assemblies in a private school as the right does not exist,it is up to the school to decide whether they allow withdrawal or whether it is compulsory

neither the right to withdraw or the law that there must be RE and assemblies apply to private schools sot hey could insist on chapel once a day and 3 lots of prayers or equally they could have absolutely no RE or worship at all, they do not have to offer RE as a subject at all as no need to follow curriculum.

you have to ask if you can and negotiate with them most are amenable lots of private schools are non denominational but if it is specifically a private christian school they are well within their rights to say it is compulsory

withdrawal would not count as excluding anyone as it is not compulsory to withdraw everyone can take part some choose not too

I'm an atheist. I deliberately chose the most secular state school I could find, with no C of E or other associations, but even then they have to sing the occasional hymn and do a nativity play at Christmas (again, not trad - usually all about the donkey or a Roman soldier or whatever). I would rail against any aspect of Christianity being presented as fact, but I don't mind them understanding a little of their heritage. For you of course, it's not your kids' heritage so I can understand your frustration. However, you actively chose not only a Christian school, but a private school which is not bound by the usual rules about making allowance for pupils to opt out of worship. Frankly I think the school are being more accommodating than they have to be by withdrawing your son to a side room! Can't you just explain to him that it's just a tradition that you don't happen to believe in but it won't do him any harm and he might enjoy the singing??

sarah, the debate has moved on. The OP IS in negotiation with her headmistress who HAS allowed her to withdraw her son.

The issue now being discussed is state schools where the collective worship is compulsory even though there is the right to withdraw.

I don't think it's right for posters to project what is OK with them onto other people and not to respect other people's beliefs.

I'm a vegetarian who eats fish. I wouldn't for a second say to a non-fish eater, 'Well, I eat fish so can't you just put up with it for today?'.

I do find it extraordinary that instead of suggesting the system changes or the school changes, posters are pressuring the OP and other parents to change their views.

I just don't get why you think that's on.

Fine whendidyoulast, but do not use exclusion often suffered by kids with SN as a comparison to bolster your argument. The two are not remotely comparable. I write as an atheist.

It is also overlooked that no one knows what the child will be - they are stuck as small children with whatever their parent has decided for them - which might, or might not suit. If you are going to decide then you need to know the alternatives.
If my mother is a vegetarian it is fair enough that she brings me up on vegetarian food, I wouldn't expect her to cook me. However, she can't decide that I am going to be a lifelong vegetarian- she has to allow for the fact that when I get to about 8yrs, and out and about more , I will eat meat. It would be unfair to expect her to accommodate it at home but I am free to have the meat option at school, in a restaurant, at a friends house etc. If it is the other way around, my family eat meat but I decide to be a vegetarian, then they will have to accommodate it at home.
I can't see that a belief system is any different.
Just because you are born into a Catholic family doesn't mean you are stuck with it for life- you have the same freedom of choice as anyone else.
The biggest group of converts to Islam are white women in their 20s
It is entirely your choice- your parents get to choose for themselves- anyone else is not in their gift.

Sorry - cook meat - not me!

whendidyoulast - I find your reference to non-fish eating vegetarians somewhat confusing... If such a person were in a school of meat and fish eating children, would you expect the school not to serve any fish or meat? Or would you just expect the school not to serve it to the non-fish eating vegetarian? And what if it were a school of vegans? Would you allow a meat eater into the school and let them eat meat in front of the vegans, or ask them to do it out of their way?

In any event, until the majority of people stop believing that this is a broadly Christian country, you aren't easily going to stop the state requiring some kind of Christian worship in state schools and I believe that in the last census in 2011, something like 59% of people identified themselves as Christian (down from 72% in 2001).

Whendidyoulast, you firmly state, "Schools should cater for the beliefs and backgrounds and needs of ALL of their pupils and not target particular events at one particular faith."

I presume you just mean in the state sector? Should a private school be held to this demand as well? That they must accommodate ALL beliefs, backgrounds and needs? So, in effect, there should be no selective schools? There should be no schools that address needs of SE or differently-abled children? What about schools for the blind ... they MUST also now teach sighted students as well?

I agree with your position that there should be no requirement to worship mandated in a state school. I also firmly believe that while the law may be behind the times given our multicultural/multifaith country, that many (not all) of the state schools are doing their best to be inclusive or at least less offensive. I also acknowledge that changing the law may be difficult, in the least (given the land/school issues, fees to be paid to buy property, perhaps increase in taxes, etc).

However, I also strongly believe that private schools are of a different nature and should not be REQUIRED to cater to the beliefs, backgrounds and needs of ALL. (Hence the descriptor, private.)

And frankly, if the OP or others want a really good (I'm assuming by good that people mean that the good school they want is academically strong ... may not be for all people, though) school that caters to their beliefs, backgrounds and needs, why don't they HE or start their own? If enough people jump on board - great for them! Success! If all of a sudden they start to receive requests of accommodations, then they'll have to decide whether to accommodate or stick to their charter or compromise. It's all easier said than done.

Now, if you were meaning that events should not be targeted at one particular faith (assuming you primarily mean, Navity, Easter, etc.), that's fine. Then there should be no events to celebrate any of the other religious beliefs either. Fair enough. Alas, I would be sad at how very limited our education of and experiences of celebrating and learning about those other religions will be ... limited to text scrutiny/comparisons and not the joy (or somberness) of the event ... how limited will be our understanding. oh well

'I'm a vegetarian who eats fish'.... Er....

Analogy doesn't work, anyway.

Nit- considering previous analogies have involved Apartheid South Africa and being excluded due to SN, I feel we're getting off quite lightly with a dietary analogy.

As a member as a minority religion, I don't feel like the anti-theist stances of some in here would do children of minority religions any favours.

There also seems to be the assumption that the increasing number of faith schools is some randomly occurring imposition, rather then something parents might want.

I would say not to be overly fixated on church attendences as a measure of religiosity, I think there are more people then you think who would like their children to have some wishy,washy religiosity at school.

As a Swedish immigrant to the UK I will admit that there were plenty of aspects of UK schools that seemed downright odd to me (school uniform, needing to remember whether female teachers were married or not so you could give them the right form of address, junk food like chips and burgers as school dinners) and some that seemed on the verge of unpleasant (the assumption that only badly behaved children would point out factual errors or injustices to the teacher).

I did not find it was my job, however, to insist that my child should have a separate dress code, eat school dinners that accorded with my cultural ideas of a proper meal or get out of detention for something that might have been considered perfectly reasonable in my culture but is considered rude in this country.

Instead, I felt it was my job to be a mediator between my child/culture and the wider world, to help them to get on in a way that would enable them both to salve their consciences and function within the society they happen to be in.

There is no point in sending your child to a Christian school if you don't want him to join in with prayers. And personally I don't agree with labelling very young children as gifted and talented. And withdrawing them for extra attention. I think I'd find a more suitable school if I were you.

Good point gosh!

Now eat your bloody fish.

rabbit, my meat and fish analogy is not about assembly it is about the line of argument people are using on this thread i.e. it never did me or mine any harm so you should just put up with it. However well meaning this is incredibly disrespectful to somebody's strongly held beliefs. Just because YOU don't mind your kids having a collective act of Christian worship does not mean that nobody else should. I doubt whether you would take that line about any other issue.

exotic, I don't get the point you're trying to make. Of course children will make their own choices as they grow up. I am all for my kids learning ABOUT other religions i.e. in RS; I think that's important. Indoctrinating them into ONE particular religion and saying that is the right one takes away choice and is hardly the best way of educating children such that they can make an informed choice as they grow up.

It's the difference between learning about politics (always a good thing) and having the head teacher invite only the Tory MP in to lecture them about the Tory manifesto EVERY SINGLE WEEK without allowing them to challenge it or hear the views of the other MPS. You wouldn't accept it would you, even if you were a Tory. It's just the same thing.

And dont' tell me that my kids are intelligent enough to challenge such views for themselves and we can always discuss it at home and it's more likely to put them off that particular set of beliefs than convert them. All that may be true, but it's really not the point.

That's also a deeply disrepsectufl and patronising argument and it dismisses my concerns and those of the OP and many other parents.

School is not for indoctrination.

It's perfectly possible to be culturally Jewish, Atheist and a Humanist.

Being Jewish is as much of a cultural and ethic position as a religious one. Whilst not a 'race' in the sense of being black or Chinese - since someone with no genetic Jewish ancestry can become a Jew through conversion, whereas no-one can opt to become black or Chinese - there is still a shared genetic ancestry among the majority of Jewish people.

Atheism merely states a lack of belief in god(s). Nothing more, nothing less.

Humanism (and in particular Secular Humanism) is an ideology that regards reason, ethics and justice as the basis of morality and decision-making and specifically rejects the supernatural and religious.

You can be an atheist and yet not be a Humanist, however you cannot really be a Humanist without also being an atheist.

'In any event, until the majority of people stop believing that this is a broadly Christian country, you aren't easily going to stop the state requiring some kind of Christian worship in state schools and I believe that in the last census in 2011, something like 59% of people identified themselves as Christian (down from 72% in 2001).'

And so more pressure to just accept the status quo.

Honestly I find it so depressing because there's such a total acceptance of THE WAY THINGS ARE as if they are simply unchangeable.

There are many countries where the majority follow a particular religion but where there is a complete separation between the church and state education.

And just because things are like this currently doesn't mean they can't be changed.

Thank goodness the Suffagettes never came across Mumsnet - ooh, yes, we think we probably should have the vote, but don't you know that we never have had it and look at all these other countries where things are even worse for women. Perhaps we should all just shut up about it