Tea Room The 24th - San Francisco Painted Lady!

[Tee2072]

Welcome to the 24th incarnation of the One-Child Tea Room. Not that you only have to have one! Just so long as you enjoy chat, tea, coffee, cake!!

The usual rules apply - no bunfighting. If you like that sort of thing, go elsewhere.
Other rules: bring . Or .

Our ongoing voyage take us to one of San Francisco's Painted Ladies!

We've brought the Aga over, it's in the back in the cosy kitchen overlooking the back garden. The chintz sofa is in the front room, under the bow window! All of the pillows and duvets have come along as well!

What's that? The Priest Hole? It's just over there --> behind the bookcase!

Mellors is upstairs, preparing the bedrooms for naps and such.

The aspidistras are thriving as they overlook Nob Hill! The horses have found themselves stabled in the Garden, which is much larger than these places usually are in this city!

So come in and have a seat!

::tea hurries off to Powell Street to catch the Cable Car to Ghirardelli Square::

I have just thought of to San Fransisco - could we put this on the duke box?

Especially for Tea and Maud, who might like it. (Or is it too soppy? [Losing confidence in own taste emoticon])

Didn't get to school visit and WRiggle is being unendurable in her disappointment. She (I'm quite sure deliberately) shut her finger in a door and we are mopping blood and whining. We are about to make bloody biscuits.

Car has actually never been a problem up to now - I just need to take it to a garage which actually repairs it this time and [gulp] actually pay for it. Have worked out how to manage in the remote Dorset countryside sans voiture until Monday pm, which will requite some thought but then car to garage on Tuesday.

And yes, I have been following the RE thread(s) with astonishment. The atheists are making the religious zealots look positively open minded!

aren't they, though! It wasn't too bad to start with, I thought - then it went a bit mad so I stepped away but it keeps coming up on my Threads I'm On. I've stopped reading it though - it's quite disturbing in places.

RE threads???

just one amber - do you really want to see it? it's about whether RE should still be taught in schools..

open it at your own peril - well not really, but You Have Been Warned

Lively!

pitchforks at dawn sort of stuff, I reckon! Don't know who'd win though... But I do think the antis are being a little spiked by the fact that some of the pros are atheists/non-religious themselves!

Since I'm part of the group that wants to promote RE in schools, I think I'd better stay well clear of the nuclear war on there

Just asking cuz I'm still confused by schools here: Do all schools have RE, even if they're not a CofE or CofE sponsored school? I'm assuming, of course, that all faith schools have their own faith-based courses.

I guess I should leave the answer to that question to Serpent - but I believe the answer is yes, all schools have some level of RE taught. But to different levels, and Catholic schools may well teach differently to non-Catholic.

At my secondary school (and oxeye's of course) we were taught RE from the word go - but the Catholic girls had Catechism, while us Protestants/non-faiths had New Testament. So they got all the "eye for an eye" and God smiting stuff, while we had all the "turn the other cheek" and "forgiveness and love" stuff But if anyone wanted to do an exam in it (O level back then, GCSE now), it all came together. We learnt about other faiths as well of course, it wasn't some kind of bible study class for indoctrination purposes.

(that is a Joke, just in case anyone is preparing to be offended by it)

Sorry! Only the bit about the differences between catechism and new testament was a joke, not the rest!

Yup, all schools have RE at present in some form or other. There's a push to drop it from the IB qualification, though.

really? Wouldn't all the Catholic countries have a fit if the international baccalaureate dropped it? or have they all gone secular as well?

No no no thumb. I did catechism but am c of e
we learnt the creed
we didn't get any guitar playing

I think they're intending to create our own English Version of IB with the bits we don't like having been removed.

(And people wonder why schools here confuse me)

DID you, oxeye? Why was that then? I thought it was only the Catholics who did it, it was in our class anyway!
No guitar playing? shame!

Will that be called the English (or British) Baccalaureate then amber? I can just see the French now - "oh, you 'ave ze English Baccalaureate - pah, well zat 'ardly counts, does eet, eet eez meesssing 'alf ze sujets!"
(apologies for Blyton-esque French accent there)

Yup, we will have an EB rather than an IB, it seems. Or in Wales, presumbably the WB, rather than a Scottish SB or an Northern Ireland NIB

Don't ask me. All very strange.

Scout, all schools have to teach RE by law, for 5% of currciulum time. This should be learning about religions, Christianity foremost but also other main religions; what do they believe in, what do they do, etc. It should be very third person: "Christians think that ...." and learning from religion ie Muslims are inspired by the life of Mohammed pbuh and I am inspired by .... I think that this is a very good thing.

Then all schools have to by law have a daily act of collective worship, which must be predominantly Christian in nature, whatever the intake of the school. I am not so much in favour of this.

I didn't know that last bit still existed, Serpent, I thought they had moved to abolish that some years ago - it can't have gone through then. I know that there were schools in areas where the hugely dominant culture was non-Christian faiths that objected to it and I thought a lot of schools were doing secular assemblies now - shows what I know then, doesn't it!

Thumb - Regular lurking on the many threads in Primary Education about school assemblies has shown me that there is often (ahem) a divergence between what the law requires and what schools actually provide. The law arises from and reflects (I think) the C of E's position as the established church, in much the same way that the courts have a church service which all the judges attend at the start of the legal session ::Waits for the tea room lawyers to correct her on this:: It's the historical relationship between church and state.

Found you! San Francisco seems very nice. Lots of folk speaking Spanish, lots of washed our former radicals and comunists, so I'm right at home.

Maud/Scout etc: the whole religion in public life thing is a big historic hangover (a bit like the funny costumes worn at various state occasions and in courts). GB never did the whole disestablishment thing in the 19th century like many catholic countries (France and Mexico being prime examples). Church and State are not separate, but rather CofE legally is a branch of the state and vicars etc therefore are akin to civil servants. With time, the push to toleration for all led to all religions (almost) sharing many of the rights of the CoE (while the enjoying administrative and directive autonomy that the CoE traditionally lacked -although today this also has changed). It's why state schools can be religious (but ought to have Christian assemblies even in the case of schools of other faiths) and also the reason why religious weddings are legal here but not in many other countries. Ditto prayers for judges.

It's all a bit of a mess in mho; I'd prefer that the CoE was disestablished just to put it on the same level as other religions. I'd also like to see the end of state religious schools in favour of a symtem in which religion is taught in all, but none is "official" iyswim. Although a rapid atheist I believe firmly in tolerance, which I think is one of the strengths of RE education in the UK. Unfortunately I think tolerance in RE can be easily overridden by religious biais in other areas when the school is linked to a specific religion or denomination of the same.

If I had the time I'd head over to the RE thread it sounds like the type of slanging match that I tend to enjoy....

Rabid athesist, obviously; although I can be darned fast running after my dc.

And for JM; just to show how tolerant I am:

Catita - Yes, that's the way I understand it. I have experienced most of these things as a school governor and, ahem, in other contexts. The bit I was querying (as it's a few years since I saw a line of judges processing into church) is whether the church service at the start of the legal session still happens but, as far as I know, it does.

I favour disestablishment too, although I think there should be faith schools for as long as people want them (as part of a system of diverse provision) and teaching about religion in schools for the same reasons. I appreciate why some people want a completely secular education for their children and balk at (say) grace before meals and wish them well with any campaign to achieve that. I don't think it would hurt any religion or religions in general if RE was dropped from the school curriculum - I hear that church attendance (as an example) is far higher in France and the USA where schools are secular and I don't see it as any school's role to proselytise - but I do think something would be lost in terms of broadening pupils' awareness of the world around them.

The only thing I find objectionable on the RE threads is when the gist of the post is "how can I ensure that my child grows up with exactly the same attitudes and beliefs as me?" That really is rather creepy.