Starting C of E primary

[stellamylove]

My D, starting local school in Sept. It's quite holy, with daily prayers, a message board to god, hymns etc. As an atheist I'd rather she wasn't exposed to this kind if brainwashing, but I don't want to stigmatize her by asking she be excluded. Is there any mileage in canvassing other parents to see if they feel the same and trying to set up a group of kids who are spared it. Has anyone tried this?
Pleas don't suggest sending her to a different school. It's our nearest local village state school + all her mates from pre-school are going!

OP-I am an evangelical Christian so I would guess my world view is diametrically opposed to yours.

But we do agree on something. I think Tony Blairs whole choice agenda is a fraud and I want my DD to go to her local school in her own community.

For me this means exactly the opposite as for you. It means I won't be trying to get her into the C of E school in the next village but sending her to the local foundation, pretty non-religious place.

So I want a religious education my local school doesn't offer and you want a non-religious one your local school doesn't offer. Life is not perfect its the compromise we have to make. Actually you have more choice than I do you can opt out of religious content I can't ask for extra!

I feel confident that I am able to teach my DD about what her family believes with help from my church and she will in due course decide if she believes or not. I am sure that similarly for you what her parents tell her will be much more important to your DD than a visiting vicar at school assembly.

You have made a choice to prioritise attending a local school over its religious character as have I . You have as much right to start up a campaign for an atheists group at your place as I have to start a Christian prayer group at mine but I hope you have the good sense not to for your DDs sake.

stellamylove,

Please relax. I'm an atheist and both my DCs went to C of E primaries because I wanted them to go to the local village schools. In the rural area where I live there's only one non-faith school and it's so oversubscribed that my DCs wouldn't have stood a cat in hell's chance of places.

Initially, I was taken aback by the religious symbols in the entrance hall, but I don't think religion ever became intrusive and I doubt my DCs' experience of primary school would have been much different if they had gone to a non-faith school. They certainly weren't brain washed. I wouldn't make a fuss.

Incidentally, I would like to see all faith schools abolished, but that's not going to happen. If you really feel strongly about it, you'd probably be better joining the Humanist Society and campaigning at national level.

All schools (community schools included) have to hold an act of corporate worship each day. There is no such thing (in Britain) as a secular school.

If people don't like it, they will have to protest on a national level, not at a local level.

This is all historic in that we do have an established church and therefore church and state are tied up.

As for church schools, they were incorporated into the state sector but were allowed to uphold their Christian nature.

We are not France or Turkey!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accord_%28coalition%29

There is a national movement to get rid of faith schools.

It's called the Accord Coalition.

I am a Christian but don't agree with faith schools; I think that all children of all faiths and non should be educated together.

I make a huge effort to send my DD to her CoE school.

Every morning I have to leave my home a lot earlier than most other parents; get on the tube with a 5year old, and 2year old + buggy, no joke when you have to fight your way through a busy tube station (in suffocating heat during summer) and then push to get on a train where we're all squashed up like sardines during the rush hour. All very stressful.

I make this effort and put myself through all this ,shunning local shcools, because we are religious and I am willing to make the effort to ensure my daughter attends a school which reflects and practices our values and beliefs.

I certainly would not send my child to a school whose ethos went completely against my personal values and beliefs, hence I cannot understand why you would want to send your child to a religious school when you are an athiest and clearly feel very strongly about the risk of your child being "brainwashed".

Why bother to start "canvassing" other parents to see if others are in agreement with you and start up your own little group within the school when you could, surely just like me,get out of bed earlier, get off your backside and make the effort to send your child to a school which is more appropriate to your principles?

I'm afraid I cannot see what the problem is here. It's pretty much black and white; if you don't want any christian influence in your child's life, don't send them to a CoE school, find and alternative.

I taught for many years in a CofE school and brainwashed no kids. Out of the year's RE topics we did in Y4 - we covered Hinduism, Buddhism and we had one topic on Christianity which was the life of Jesus (always amused me the kid who piped up halfway through "I know this one - he dies at the end"). Assemblies were on all sorts of things - the last one I recall doing was on teamwork and co-operation... any objections to THAT as brainwashing?

We did have local clergy from various groups come in to talk to us - from the Salvation Army, to the local Vicar (last sighted helping year 6 dig the school turf maze) but there was definitely no brainwashing and about 2 church events a year.

Your child's not started yet and you're already plotting a mutinous group of parents to overthrow the evilness of the church control? That WILL mark you out as a troublemaker and a pain in the rear... it's a CHURCH school - you knew that when you made the choice to send your child there, it's very hypocritical and in my mind somewhat unacceptable to want to pick and choose - you want the standards, location and general be nice to each other ethos - yet you don't want the church stuff that underpins and partially finances this? I disagree strongly with some things to do with Catholicism and particularly bad experiences of their education system... it's why I wouldn't choose to send a child of mine to a Catholic school - rather than expect to get in and then mutiny from within on the first week of September.

Give the place to someone who WANTS the church education if you're going to just try to cause chaos and mayhem out of some misinformed ignorance.

This thread makes depressing reading.

Every child should have a right to go to their most local school, first and foremost. How could anyone argue against that?

Elliebelli - you are missing a crucial point. You have the choice to "get off your backside and make the effort to send your child to a school which is more appropriate to your principles" because faith schools have a different type of admissions criteria. You are permitted to send your child to a school far from your home because that school is allowed to select on the grounds of a parent's religion.

Everyone else, however, is allocated a catchment school, which has set boundaries. The admissions criteria for those schools is based on distance from the school. If every school place is taken up by the children living in the catchment area, there is no room in the school for someone coming from another area. Therefore, the OP, may not have any choice but to send her child to that c of E school. All the non-faith schools in the area are likely full up with people who live in that catchment area or much closer to the school.

I would suggest that the selfish attitude belongs to those supporters of faith schools, who can revel in their 'I'm alright jack' attitude because they have a greater choice of STATE-FUNDED schools to attend than their secular neighbours and don't wish to acknowledge the grave unfairness of the current system. What is fair about a little girl not being entitled to attend the school in her local community wihtout signing up to an ethos that her family do not share.

I read the OP as a parent who wished to find fellow parents to opt out of the RE element so that her daughter would not be the only one. At the school where my mother taught, the children of Jehovah's Witnesses would opt out of certain activities and one of their parents would come in to do something with them instead. Something made much easier due to the fact of there being several families who shared the same opinion.

pernickety perhaps you missed this later post

stellamylove
I'm unhappy with the fact that at my local state-funded school is allowed to preach to childeren unless they specifically opt out.

The alternative to opting out ?
All parents who choose to send their child to a church school because of religious beliefs having to opt in perhaps?

(A bit off topic)

I have an Indian friend who grew up in India as a Hindu. However (she said) the Indian school system is based on the British one and she was taught all about Christianity.

She said to me when she was little, she used to wake up on 25th December every year and think she must have been a naughty girl because she hadn't received any Christmas presents :(

Again, you miss the point PixieOnaLeaf. Being permitted to make a choice isn't the same as actually having a choice.

And people shouldn't have to opt out of something that their local state school provides. These schools know very well that parents will be torn between wanting to opt them out and not wanting to set them apart from their fellow class mates at such a young age (my daughters would have been very upset about that at infant school age).

pernickety so what do you propose should happen if half of the parents who have children in the local school want a Christian education and the other half don't want this?

Mrz - "pernickety so what do you propose should happen if half of the parents who have children in the local school want a Christian education and the other half don't want this?" I propose that there are no state faith schools. The parents who want their children to have a christian education can find that through their church (sunday school?) The parents who want faith kept out of school, don't have any other options.

What do you propose should happen if half the parents of a local school wish their children to receive a jewish education and the other half don't want this? Whose ideal triuphs? The parents whose ideal restricts the rights of everyone else or the parents whose ideal allows a school to be inclusive and open to everyone?

"So why is your right to have your children in a secular manner greater than the right of those who want a Christian education for their children? "

Because we all pay taxes that go towards education and schools should be inclusive. It's not possible to provide a school to match every parents ideal, so one that bases its education on the national curriculum only, is open to everyone. It's not taking anyone's rights away, only their preferences. A totally different thing. Faith schools, however, do take away the rights of non-faith children if they are excluded from using their local school. I'd go further to argue that ALL children have a right to an education that is not biased towards any one religion.

"Do you mean that Christian parents have no right for their children to be educated in this way?" They have as much right to choose the type of education for their child as any other parent who wants an education different from the mainstream state-funded education. They can find an independent school that matches their ideals.

"And is it more fair for those who are Christian to be singled out for extra religious education, than for those whose parents opt them out or religious education to be singled out?"

The church would fulfil the duty of providing extra religious education. There is no need for any child to be singled out in mainstream schools that are not faith schools.

pernickety you seem to be ignoring my question

and the fact that all maintained schools must provide daily collective worship for all registered pupils (apart from those who have been withdrawn from this by their parents). This is may be provided within daily assembly but the distinction should be made clear.

The head teacher is responsible for arranging the daily collective worship after consulting with the governing body. Daily collective worship must be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.

and the fact that most parents choose not to withdraw their children.

Mrz
the problem is the status quo in a world that's moved on. I know it's a fact that schools are obliged to provide broadly christian worship every day.
My original post acknowledged this and was really angling for a way of challenging it from the bottom up. As a number of posters demonstrate there's a strong feeling, (even from some christians) that religion should be separated from and outside education from. I think it's unlikely to happen from the top down as politically it's a hot potato.
It saddens me that people are dismissive or downright aggressive to this idea, saying I'll be seen as a troublemaker, a difficult parent and how dare I jeopardise my child's happiness with my own selfish ideals.
There is a basic injustice going on here when state education can be used to peddle religion to children too young to make an informed decision about what they're being taught. People protesting for other (perhaps more important)issues like women's suffrage, slavery, child labour were also seen as difficult by apathetic and unthinking masses at the time..

stellamylove you seem to be suffering under the delusion that schools peddle religion it just isn't true. Most schools, even church schools will give pupils a balanced education. They will give children information and let them work out for themselves what they believe and what they don't.

Pixie, what exactly is the purpose of religion in school, then?

you could ask what is the purpose of geography - learning about countries we may never visit or weather we may never experience. Or what is the purpose of learning a foreign language we may never use outside of school, or history because we can't travel back in time ...