Superstitious crap-peddling in non-church school, how to deal with it?

[SpringchickenGoldBrass]

DS (6, in Year 1) came home from school today talking about what he's going to give up for Lent. I asked him if he understood why he was supposed to be giving up things for Lent (of course he had no idea) and made sure he knew that he didn't have to and I would be doing no such thing, and we had a little talk about superstitions.
I am seriously pissed off with this and want to speak to the school about it. We live in a very multicultural area and I want to know A) if all the 6 year old Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and whatever else are trotting home stuffed with this crap and if not, how can I get DS exempt from it? Just because we are English does not mean we are CofE, I am a hardline atheist and DS dad and I have been raising him with as little superstition as possible.
I do not think it's appropriate for a group of culturally-mixed 6 year olds to be fed this sort of bullshit (which is going to be beyond most of them anyway) - I have no problem with DC being taught about the various mythology brands but the actual practicing of this nonsense should not be suggested to them at school.

Ivy: what an idiotic thing to say.

PB: I addressed you by name shortly after you posted. I asked about her bigoted statement, not her language, her bigoted statement that vociferous defenders of religion are more likely to be child abusers.

Grimma: you're right, perhaps: she stood by it.

And there she is again. How bigoted. No, nothing of the sort: and I'm extremely fluid on the idea of religion in schools.

But I do dislike bigotry. And bigots.

Why do I have to give my "belief system" some thought?

I don't beleive in the Loch Ness Monster - I haven't give that a lot of thought. I don't beleive in the Kraken - I haven't given that a lot of thought. I don't believe in fairies - I haven't given that a lot of thought. I don't beleive in god - why should I given that any more thought that the others things I don't be believe in?

Why should that make yo u respect me any more or less?

I have however given my value system a lot of thought. I have a strong sense of ethics - to the extent that it sometimes got/gets in the way when I do business. I believe in honesty. I believe in being nice to others. I believe that "what goes around, comes around". I prefer to trust people and possibly be disappointed than to go around distrusiting everyone's motives. I beleive in helpoing others - not just out of altruism but also becasue one day I might also need help.... and so on.

And now I'm off. I had a mutually respectful discussion about faith and education in the middle of this nasty thread, and the OP has had to admit that she stands by that very bigoted statement.

And because she does stand by it, so proudly, I really don't want to grace this thread any more.

I've searched to find where you asked me by name to address the OP's bigotry (even using "Advanced Search" after my visual trawl of the long thread) and failed to find anything. Could you point me to your post? I am genuinely confused.

oops forgot to hide thread

no idea pb, not going to look, just after your last post before these posts I guess

"grace/presence" v pompous but don't really care

OP: had I tried to get something banned for blasphemy you'd have me down as more likely to be a child abuser I guess

that's what bigotry does I'm afraid

now I must hide thread or will keep looking for unreasonable things to respond to

Would it be more acceptable to say 'if people in a position of power are vociferously demanding that it be illegal to criticise them, it might be worth looking into WHY?'.

It's hardly headline news, is it - 'people in a position of power sometimes abuse it and commit criminal offences'.

I ducked out of this thread for a couple of days because I was getting fed up with gooseberry's patronising. There's no proven link between faith and a heightened social conscience, commitment to altruism etc. - none at all. To claim there is, well, that's just daft. And it's equally daft to claim faith school parents have more input into parental support.

Anyway, this got derailed - as SGB reminds us, it was never about god-schools in the first place, but about unnecessary goddiness in normal schools.

not really idiotic to not respect someone else's views - they are their own views. I respect soemone who has worked hard at sports, over come disability - respect is earned. I do not respect soemthing I disagree with any more than you respect something you disagree with.

I tolerate other peoples views, I am suppose to tolerate you keep telling me that religion will not harm my offspring, I am supposed to tolerate you telling me that my parenting isn't as good as a person with religion - you don't state whether that person with religion - the better parent - has to tick a box to say they are religious or whether they visit a place of worship. If it is the latter then only 8500 people qualify for your status, which is idiotic in my opinion to say that religious parents are better parents.

Whats this 8500 people thing?

The past heated discussion aside, surely part of the problem here is actually defining what is 'religious', and thinking about that from both a young learner's and an adult's point of view.

Schools do all kinds of things which are 'christian', although it's often non-christian faith groups that notice-they work Monday-Friday, serve hot cross buns, observe Easter and Christmas holidays etc. They are also compelled to provide RE, even if the framework varies. And you can find one of those OK and the other not (I do).

Whether broader Christian practice, such as the discussion of abstinence or self-abnegation prompted by Lent should inform is part of this issue (since Cosmo and Glamour do this too, as might an atheist KS coordinator). Because, after all, the OP's DC did NOT understand this obligation in religious terms, he didn't know why (and a real god bothering would have made it clear).

Or is the objection instead to an imported religious figure? In which case I have sympathy, but equally see children exposed to quite cool puppet shows giving cultural references to bible stories, and then asking questions ranging from 'why did god flood the earth?', 'Why was he mean?' to 'where did the snakes live' and 'how did he find the chameleons'?

I can see why many parents, of both non-christian faith and atheist backgrounds are worried by the creation of a 'space' where dogma can exist, of room for the acceptance of a particular God. But the question is surely whether this happens not if we can see that logically it could-after all entire curriculum allows room for power to assert itself-history for nationalist preaching, geography for westerncentric theories of development, English for RP over dialect etc.

Basically, if you want to change it, you need to be clearer and more precise about what you are complaining about: 'religion' is a broad and useless term.

Basically, I can see the worry, but I think children rather more resistant to indoctrination than many here, and certainly resistant enough to the rather weak strain thrown at them by puppet shows and vicarly chats.

I really am going to have to kick the visiting vicar's arse at some point. The fucker's been telling DS that people have to be 'blessed' to 'get the devil out of them'. I told DS that this was silly nonsense, there are no such things as devils and certainly none in little boys. I said that some people might believe it, but they were silly to do so and it isn't a very nice way to think.

Have you read the R.E. policy at your school? 10% of teaching time should be R.E. including communal worship. Christianity is an important world faith.