Strongly Christian harvest festival in non-faith school

[Hooliesmoolies]

I am really annoyed about the Harvest festival at my child's school. The leadership of the school are strongly Christian and I am offended at the way they impose their own beliefs on my child's state school. I know that an act of worship is within the regulations, however the way it is implemented varies MASSIVELY across schools. And evidently, there is no choice because I live in London and so we are just lucky to have a good school at the end of the road. I'm not going to put my full rant here, but I am going to post this:

www.change.org/p/end-compulsory-worship-in-schools

For anyone who feels like me!!

Why would non Christians want to select the outstanding Catholic school if they object to religion? You cannot moan about religion in schools and then whinge about not getting your child into the Catholic one.

Whether there should be any faith schools is a whole other argument.

I agree it is crap if the non religious school is "Requires Improvement" but can also say that OFSTED don't give those schools very long to turn things around.

Harvest Festival is right up there with Xmas and Easter for me. It's just something all schools do.

However, it can be beautifully done in a non religious way.

So I would ask the head why it has such a Christian focus when it could be done in so many other humanitarian ways.

What do you mean by "a Christian ethos"?

"I am not remotely against the Harvest festival. I am against the fact that my child's school turns it into a celebration and thanking of God at Harvest time"

But that's what Harvest Festival IS.

And before this thread goes any further, can we ensure that we are all making a clear distinction between "learning about faith" and "practising a faith". A lot of time is usually wasted on this. I want my primary aged children to be taught about different faiths. I do not want them to be taught to practise any faith, or to be expected to do so in the course of a school day in a non Church state funded school.

If that was to me gratefulhead, no we don't want our children to go to a religious school of any kind. Luckily we were a couple of hundred metres away from being forced to send our child to the failing school, which is the CofE. Someone was saying people should just not choose a CofE school, and I was pointing out many don't have a choice. Funnily enough the religious people seem to exercise their choice of a religious school only if the education is perceived to be better. So where's our choice?

grateful - I live in an area where all the nearby state schools are faith schools. So of course you'd prefer to choose the 'outstanding' one rather than a poorer one. But the first will be oversubscribed, so the school can apply religious discrimination. The children of parents of no religion or the wrong religion then are stuck with a poorer faith school (it may not be 'failing' but still second or third best). This is the sort of situation which was being described upthread.

newbie 'I thought the whole idea of choice is that parents can choose a faith school if they want to.' Yeah, you'd have thought... but as I've just described, some parents can't choose a nonfaith state school in their area, and as with the OP, a lot find that even when they've chosen a 'non-faith' school, it's far from being secular (which is what many, many people want) because of the anachronistic 'collective worship' law.

In Scotland we only have Catholic schools, there are no Church of Scotland schools, which I am grateful for. I classify myself as an non practising Christian, I would hate to be put into the position of having to attend a church to get my DC into a decent school!
I have no objection to my DC taking part in Christian festivals.

An amazing number of atheists seem to have been able to form their atheist views despite being exposed to lots of religious observance as children. Given this, I'm baffled at the lengths some of the same atheists go to in order to 'protect' their children from similar exposure. Surely the child will have the same capacity as its parent to make up its own mind in due course?

"Surely the child will have the same capacity as its parent to make up its own mind in due course?"

Of course. I am not concerned about my child being indoctrinated. I just object very strongly to the idea that you have to be at least a nominal Christian to participate fully in the life of a non faith state funded school.

And surely the reverse is also pertinent? Why do Christians feel that their faith is so fragile that 6 hours a day spent in a secular environment is going to cause their children to question and reject it?

Manatee - How we 'make up our minds' is always influenced by what's gone into it at a young age. Most atheists on this thread are entirely happy with the notion of all children being 'exposed' to a wide variety of religious and cultural ideas - but any system which has a built-in lack of balance is bound to impart biases. Faith schools, and non-faith like the OPs which apparently heavily favours one particular religion, will help define the children's view of 'us' and 'them', of whether a particular religion is 'good' or not.

Why should part of the school day be spent engaging in the religious practice of one religion?

But I thought Harvest Festival is a Christian festival?

Bit hard to have a Christian festival without mentioning God.

"Surely the child will have the same capacity as its parent to make up its own mind in due course?"

It's the bit before the due course that damaged me as a child. The feelings of guilt. The trying to reconcile the Old Testament to my personal ideas of morality. Wasting what should be innocent years worrying about what some deity thought of me. Thinking I was bad for having doubts about it all. Thinking my mother was going to hell because she wasn't religious, and that I was bad for not trying to convert her. None of that was things my school told me, but things I deduced from things they did say and I took as fact.

At a basic level all the time wasted in school talking about religion - far more than necessary for simple RE purposes - that could have been spent on other things. I'd like to protect my children from all that.

Harvest festival can be a celebration of the harvest without having to thank a deity for it.

You live in a Christian country , if you aren't happy move.

What??!!

I'm a Christian and even I find that offensive Soon!

But I thought Harvest Festival is a Christian festival?

You think that precisely because you've been brought up in a Christian culture, and probably experienced it via a Christian school assembly whether or not you're also a churchgoer. In fact, as with winter and spring celebrations, Harvest celebrations are ubiquitous, and in Britain started in Pagan times.

I think this rather proves the OP's point. I had to google that because actually I didn't have a clue about the history and other cultures - I'm a 'cultural christian', having had very little exposure to other religious traditions growing up.

Soon, . So much wrong with that statement I don't know where to start.

We live in a free, democratic country, so if there's things we don't like about it we can say so and try to change them. May take a while, but I'll stay, thanks.

Christian ethos means that Christianity permeates everything that is done in school and what the school stands for.

In a CofE school with a strong Christian head, you'd be hard pushed to find any sort of happy medium with a moderate atheist let alone a staunch atheist.
There is alot more religion and worship going on than just at collective worship. Prayers every morning, prayers before lunch, religious refection on issues that come up, dicussion on how christianity ties in with the subject of the day ect ect ect.
How you'd get around all that I'm not sure.

In the US, where we have separation of church and state by law and thus no religious observances in schools are allowed, schools still manage to have Thanksgiving (the US harvest festival) activities and programs without religious aspects.

Thanksgiving Day had religious origins, but it is essentially a secular holiday now, with people of all religions or no religion observing it.

newbie - very hard, which is why it's so entirely wrong that a faith school is sometimes the only state school available.

I wasn't aware that some parents were forced to choose a faith school.....Up north where I am there is always a choice of a non faith school.... The LA can't force a faith school on parents as far as I know.

At first I was thinking what is wrong with a bit of "we plough the fields and scatter" and delivering tinned peaches to pensioners.

However, having read follow up posts I think you have a point. I think it would be appropriate to be thankful and thoughtful and have something along the lines of "As you know children this is a church and christians believe that…." and sing some traditional hymns. However lots of hymns and spiel specifically thanking God is confusing in a secular school.

Having said that, there is nothing like a bit of school religion to bore you into atheism.

Because historically the church was the provider of education it still owns many school buildings and many areas only have faith schools.