Will your child be starting worship this September?

[LichtenA]

Christian worship has been compulsory in our state schools since 1944. The law is widely ignored but can cause problems for parents, pupils and even teachers where it is enforced.

As part of their state education, this September, you child could be compelled to participate in Christian worship to a God they may have little or no concept of.

You can sign the petition to end compulsory worship in schools.

"My son is without religion. I don't want him to have any."

So much for having an open mind and encouraging your child to have one, then.

All state schools are supposed to have a daily Christian-based worship Grateful. With so many obviously ignoring it what's the point of keeping it? If schools do want to keep the God-fearing bit then it should be in the prospectus so parents are aware. It's so variable, that's what's wrong.

having no religion is the default position all children are born with nimin. It's only when adults stsrt to indoctrinate that they have beliefs pushed upon them.

Having no religion keeps the mind free from from the encumberment of faith.

So if you all don't believe in God, why does it really bother you that your DCs listen to a little prayer at the end of assembly? Surely if there is no God then the prayer is arbitrary anyway.

Add message | Report | Message poster niminypiminy Sat 30-Aug-14 08:54:30
"My son is without religion. I don't want him to have any."

"So much for having an open mind and encouraging your child to have one, then."

You seem to be interpreting the fact that I don't want my son to be taught something as truth as me not wanting him to be aware of other people's faith. If schools want to teach about religions in the classroom then that's ok but I do object to my five year old being toldmtheybhave to pray and worship in school and that the onus is on me to opt out. It's ridiculous. Why should the status quo be that we worship regardless of the fact that we have no religion? Why should I have to withdraw my child? Surely it should be the other way round, where religious people can opt in.

And having a religious element to assembly obviously doesn't indoctrinate children, otherwise there wouldn't be as many atheists as there appears to be.

Add message | Report | Message poster ACheesePuff Sat 30-Aug-14 09:03:55
So if you all don't believe in God, why does it really bother you that your DCs listen to a little prayer at the end of assembly? Surely if there is no God then the prayer is arbitrary anyway.

All of you who do believe in god, why is it so important to wou that those without any religion be compelled to sit in on something they do not need? Why not just ask those who are religious to opt in?

Small children are impressionable and taking a five year old who has never heard of god or prayer and sticking the into a situation where they are being told to do so, that it is all real, is just ridiculous. The natural state, when we are born, is to be without religion and schools should not be used as a place to start injecting religion as a truth into young minds.

Why isn't compulsory in schools but not in the workplace or university?

People interpret atheism as someone who has rejected religion. To reject it you have to have it in the first place.

I don't have it, my son doesn't have it. We are not rejecting it, we just don't have it. By having religious worship in school the child is being taught something as fact that they are then expected to accept or reject. I would rather the status quo of being without religion be maintained for my child. The whole idea that worship has to be included in schooling is outdated and wrong in my opinion.

Getting rid of worship in schools won't effect the religious at all,mother can still go to their churches or do bible stud at home if the choose and their children can reject that teaching later in life if they choose, like many do.

What are the good reasons for having worship in schools?

I'm amused - or possibly the better word is bemused - by the number of people who recommend children being taught about 'all religions' at school, as if this were even possible.

The worship of Ra? Zoroastrianism? Scientology? The Prince Philip Movement? Nuwaubianism? Jedi? ... and a thousand more. All of them religions. All of them worthy of exactly as much respect as christianity, islam etc.

I'm all for children being given the opportunity to learn about other people's strange beliefs. So long as they're taught that such beliefs, at least those dignified with the epithet 'religious', are, as they appear to be, simply risible.

So unless children are allowed, nay, encouraged to laugh out loud at foolish (and obviously false) tales about Jesus, Mohammed, God, virgin births, dead people brought back to life, and all the rest of the nonsense hoo-ha and woo, and this during acts of 'worship', I'm against the latter.

I'm open-minded, you see. Let a hundred flowers bloom.

Yes I would agree that it seems pretty pointless to keep it in the "rules". I like that our school is so informal.

My sons school is catholic, I didn't choose a catholic school but it's fine, not hugely heavy on the religion and DS and I have had some interesting chats about faith etc. he knows for example that not everybody believes the same things.

I think it's less about what the school present and more about how we handle this as parents.

My son has gone through the whole of primary school now and while he likes some of the religion stuff he is not interested in attending church etc. He likes the pagan ethos of his auntie far more as it's much more nature based.

He has also had some very interesting discussions with the local priest who is definitely a bloke first and a priest second !who has also told him that people believe many different things and some have no faith at all and this is okay. Actually the more I think about this, the more I realise we have just been lucky not to have religion forced down DS's throat due to enlightened and relaxed school staff and the very easy going priest attached to the school. I know that isn't the same everywhere.....and I am now wildly off topic.

I agree that there is no need for daily worship in schools.

Are there any good things about worship?

The only thing I can think of is that it's nice to pause for thought,not say thank you to the universe for the great fortune of being born in a time and a place where so much is available to us. Okay, I am obviously a bit of a hippy but you get the drift.

Maybe meditation would be better, pausing to focus on the good things and the good feelings etc.m

I agree, a pause for thought is a positive aspect of a school assembly, it just doesn't need dressing up as a Christian model.

The reason Christianity is encouraged in schools is because the C of E church is dying on its feet. Church attendance is at an all time low and the church has been struggling to find ways to bring more people into the flock. Schools are full of young, impressionable children - what better recruiting ground than that?

This strategy has been openly admitted to by the C of E.

I have no faith but my son has developed one through school. He enjoys it and I occasionally take him to church. Not something I ever thought I would do.

I can't see why people are so anti their children having a faith in something. The stuff my son comes home from school and talks about is mostly morals which apply anyway. Whether he learns this through a story from the bible or a fairy tale bothers me very little.

If you feel strongly you can remove them from assemblies though

what Starlight says is very sensible. all of you that claim no religion and get in a tiz about the act of worship, do you not see that you could in fact be denying your child something which may bring them comfort and teach them morals at the same time?

Church schools have always existed, and nearly all state schools have always held religious assemblies, it's not a new strategy to get kids to go to church.

Tue, cheese, but if you click my link, you'll see the policy is now extending to non-religious schools.

And just because it's always been done doesn't make it right.

Dances, as has been extensively discussed on this forum and elsewhere, there is no automatic link between morals and religion. My atheist teenagers' morals are as strong as those of any religious person.

*True

but to actively prevent your child from finding comfort in religion? that is surely just as 'wrong' as indoctrination?

I think most people would say they are happy for their children to find religion when they are ready, not because it is a compulsory element of their education.

And I'm not sure why you are so convinced that religion is automatically a comfort to people. Try telling that to the gay teenager whose fundamentalist religious parents tell him his feelings are "repulsive" (quote from a programme on TV about "gay conversion camps" in the US).

People learn morals without religion.

If my son wanted to 'find faith' himself when he's older then I wouldn't stop him.

I am not denying my son anything.

While it's true that having a faith doesn't make people more moral, that says nothing about the kind of morality they espouse. Believing that babies with Down's Syndrome ought to be aborted is a moral position.

And research consistently shows that religious people give more to charity and volunteer more than those with no faith. So having a faith clearly makes some difference to the way people live their lives. Of course it's also true that there are nasty and cruel people of faith - but then the Christian church doesn't claim to be anything more than a bunch of sinners in need of redemption.

Grateful Head asks whether there's anything worthwhile in worship. The typical pattern of Christian worship has four elements: thinking about the things you do that you shouldn't do and the ways you fall short of your ideals, saying sorry and promising to try to do better; being thankful for all that we have, for the world around us; thinking about others and about their needs, and about suffering in the world around us; coming together as a community. Those seem to me to be innately valuable things.

Now, a humanist assembly could do all those things. But it is actually harder to put together and lead than it sounds, which is one reason why vicars spend years training to lead worship. It's more than mimsy 'think good thoughts and let's try to be good people'.

If I were a humanist I think I would be encouraging my children to use the time of worship to practice these useful habits of thought without God in them, rather than working myself up into a lather about them being forced to pray. After all, having a truly open mind means that you try to see beyond your own beliefs and prejudices, doesn't it?

Plus, in education they could simply change it to an opt in system rather than putting parents with no religion the position where they have to opt out. It places worship as the status quo which it just isn't right.

I would ask those who do support the situation as it is now, why not change it to opt in?

I think patents should have the choice to terminate a pregnancy where downs syndrome is detected, this has nothing to do with me being without religion. Just because Richard Dawkins is a bit of a twat, doesn't mean anything and I don't associate my being without religion with his brand of Atheism.

There are plenty of really awful things proclaimed in the name of religion which I would not associate with the beliefs of my religious friends.

That would be a rather narrow way of looking at the subject.

DuelingFanjo, I have tried to answer that in my previous post.