C of E School - non believing attendee

[ChasingSquirrels]

ds has just started in YR at the local village school - which is a VC C of E school. DH and I do not have any religion and although ds has an idea of god he says that he doesn't believe (fair enough - he says "we don't believe in god" and I say "well I don't but you can make your own mind up when you are older", but I appreciate he is a bit young for that concept).
Anyway, he has started saying prayers and singing hymms at home (when we sit down to eat he occasionally says "for what we are about to recieve...", and yesterday was singing "we've got the whole world in our hands").
I don't have any problem with this, to me the hymms are just songs and it is nice to be thankful for the fact we have food.
BUT he then asks me what these things mean, or with reference to the whole wide world song said it was silly and a man couldn't hold the world in his hand could he?
I have then been explaining that they are prayers to god, or songs about god, and explaining the concepts behind them.
THEN ds gets arsy and says he isn't going to say them or isn't going to sing them because he doesn't believe in god. Which I don't think is a good thing at 5.
Any idea on how to approach this?

Lorayn - so basically if other people cannot go to the lengths you have had to do to excercise your choice (aka right to state funded education) they should just suck it up? The £20, the hours travelling time, etc etc?

No, but if they go to a CofE school and have a huge problem with the religion they do have a choice, what I'm saying is it is all dependant on how strongly you feel about it.

I would love my children to be able to go to a CofE school, but there isnt one in our town, let alone my village.

Of course your child learning religion when you arent religious isnt the ideal, but these schools were often started by the local church hundreds of years ago and at the time supported the villagers, who would have been mainly religious.

If it is going to be that much of an issue then thnk about it when you move somewhere, dont move to a village that only has a CofE school.

I know I sound unreasonable, but it's the way it is, people have to put up with schools that have awful teachers, a larger than average amount of problem pupils but it isnt as little a choice for parents as it is made out to be.

Lorayn - I do not have a choice. It would not be £20 a week, it would be hundreds as there would be no option but to use a childminder and taxis. He is 4.

The money is not however the point. I live in a village with a strong community ethos and a STATE FUNDED primary school. My son has known the children he is at school with since he was born and they are all part of the local community. There are no alternative schools.

We live in a secular society and this aspect of education is lagging behind. The change should not come from me but the Govt and the LEA. How will anything ever change if I were to simply accept the position and find an alternative school for my child?

IMO 'the only school in the village' should be secular and non-religious. It just isn't good enough that people shouldn't be ab;le to live in huge swathes of the country because the only 'choice' of school is a pro-actively religious one! Rural de-population is bad enough as it is!!

If I was you, Lolrayn, I would be writing to my MP and the Education minister, not sending kids to childminder and spending two hours a day travelling!

Why should it change?
Should all faith schools stop being faith schools?
Are only non-religious peoples ideal education important?

There is a closer school than the one DD goes to blu, but its ofsted reports have been terrible, and I refuse to send her there, there is also a free school bus that would help me immensely (I dont drive so those 2hrs a day are on buses, costing us another £25 pw)

I just dont think that people can say because they arent religious that all schools should stop being religious.

Because religion and the state are separate in this country. Because state education is financed by public money. Because faith is a private matter not a public one.

Religious education is something you should opt in to as a matter of personal preference. It is not something that the state should be involved in.

If a state school was teaching your children that the pasta fairy existed and should be hailed every morning - would that be a legitimate use of taxpayers money?

Many religious schools arent just funded by the state, they have donations from churchgoers and fund raising by the church too.

Lorayn, although you are right in saying that many schools were originally started by churches they are now at least part-funded by the LEA/government and that money comes from the taxes of UK citizens regardless of what faith they do or don't hold. To suggest that someone shouldn't move to an area if they are non-religious and the only schooling option is a faith school is unreasonable - setting up what would amount to faith-based ghettos is hardly the way to achieve a tolerant and integrated society. We pay our taxes and I believe we should have the right to have access to non-faith education wherever in the country we live. Having faith schools is, in my opinion, discriminatory. I live in a rural area with barely any non-Anglo Saxon residents and I do wonder how many people who are non-CofE or Catholic are put off moving to the area simply because they wouldn't have any access to schools which didn't push Christianity at them on a daily basis. Faith is a personal matter and although I believe that RE in schools is essential, it should be balanced and broad-ranging, not focussed entirely on the religions which have, historically, been predominant in this country. And it should be restricted to RE lessons.

Not this one and not in most voluntary maintained schools of which I am aware. Churces these days seem to have enough problem raising money for their own buildings without being able to spread it aroungd (dwindling congregations and rising costs).

There are lots of fund raising activities within the community but none specifically by the church - and even if there were, would that not just be part of their role in supporting an important aspect of the community?

I will say it again, this is a STATE FUNDED school with support from an active PTA.

I should add Lorayn that I have no problem with faith schools but they should not ever be the "default option", that is the only school in a particular place. Parents should have to seek out faith school and opt in to them.

"setting up what would amount to faith-based ghettos is hardly the way to achieve a tolerant and integrated society".

Reading this thread it is the non religious types who come across as intolerant. My personal view is if non-religious types feel so strongly about their belief, why do they choose to live somewhere where the only schools available are faith based ones?

I just don't understand why non-religious parents with children at faith based schools can't be more tolerant.

Exactly Spokette!
I have to put up with my Dd going to a school that doesnt cater for her religion, but thats fine, because it is the best school for education, why cant people just be happy they have children in schools!

The biggest influencers in a child's life is its parents so non-believers should be able to mitigate the insiduous christian influences when their children are at home.

I choose to live in a secular state.

Frankly niether dh nor I have a great deal of choice about where we work and therefore where we live. There are all kinds of reasons why we (or anyone else) lives in the places we do, to suggest that it is as simplistic as you seem to be is naive.

You may choose to send your children wherever you like and your personal beliefs and theirs are their own. Religious indoctrination of small children by the state is wrong and this is what religious state primary schools amount to.

The law protects my freedom of association and belief but not it seems when it comes to education

But Spokette, what else is it when Lorayn is suggesting that non-Christians should not move to a certain area? It becomes an area which caters only for people with one type of belief. I just think it's a very strange suggestion.

I am wholeheartedly tolerant of other religions. As I think I said, I tell my ds that his teachers believe one thing and we believe another. I don't tell him they are wrong (though obviously on the subject of God making things grow I have to contradict this with explanations about the role of nature in the growing of things!), I tell him that there are many different beliefs in the world. It is they who have trouble tolerating the fact that I don't share their beliefs.

You wrote "My personal view is if non-religious types feel so strongly about their belief, why do they choose to live somewhere where the only schools available are faith based ones?" You are re-stating what Lorayn said as far as I can tell, and if, in the county in which I live, we practised what you are preaching non-Christians would not be living in about 60% of the county and they certainly wouldn't be living outside towns. Those who hold a particular religious belief have their homes and their churches in which to surround themselves with their beliefs - why should they dominate schools as well?

Also, many people do not choose to move somewhere - there are several people in my village who are not religious, who were born here and whose children were born here. They have not chosen to move here, they have always lived here. But their only schooling choice for their children is religious.

Why do I live in an area where only faith-based schools are available in the state sector? Uh, because my DHs job required us to move to rural Lancashire, before we even had decided to have a family. Theres a huge swathe round here where the choice is CofE or RC - we had no idea, coming from areas which had a more proportionate provision of faith/non-faith schools.

Anyhow... the OP was being entirely tolerant, she was asking for help on how to approach a particular situation that arises because of her lack of choice. And all the suggestions tantamount to, move home or spend loads of money are really not too helpful.

ChasingSquirrels - schools should teach children HOW to think not WHAT to think. Let your son know that he is entitled to his opinion on matters of belief but that he should be polite and tolerant. Don't tell other kids that either Father Christmas or Jesus aren't real if they like believing in them.

Would you stay in an area where your childrens schooling was unacceptable in other ways?
For example, if they suffered an awful ofsted report?
No, you wouldnt send your child there in the first place, or you'd move them.

I do beleive in God but I would object to my children being 'made' to say grace, or being 'made' to recite the Lord's prayer. To me religion is personal and I will do what my conscience dictates.

I think if my children had to go to such a secular school i would be in the Head's office telling them what they could and could not say to my children and what they should let them chose to do as far as grace / prayers are concerened. That way hopefully children will grow up learning tolerance of different beliefs.

All schools teach things which are by not going to be agreeable to all parents.
They're called morals.
FWIW, when I was at school, a non-religious school, we said prayers and sang hymns. I think it's awful that we aren't allowed to do so now because it isn't PC.

We have church schools because the secular state failed to provide adequate education for the indigent population of yesteryear and as part of its pastoral ethos, the church undertook this role.

In areas where there is a multi-cultural community, faith schools have a high percentage of children of ethnic origin and different faiths because their parents value the ethos enshrined in these schools. This ghettosisation of communities that is often levelled at church schools is a fallacy imo.

Non-believers do not want their children indoctrinated with religion and I don't believe that is what church schools do. Church schools are principally about preparing children to enter secondary schools by providing them with the fundamentals in English, Maths and Science. It also prepares them to live as part of a community where values such as love, respect, kindness, empathy and tolerance are paramount.

If church schools were successfully indoctrinating children, why are the numbers of young people going to church dwindling?

Can I just say to ChasingSquirrels, sorry I was answering other threads rather than your op.

I think in your situation its best to explain to DS that although he doesnt believe, many of the other pupils etc do, and that although you're perfectly happy for him to tell people he doesnt believe, that you would rpefer him to play by the rules as it would be rude not to.

Maybe explain to him that other things people will be taught at school, for example evolution, do not adhere to the beleifs others have yet they will still be expected to do the work?

Maybe you should have a word with the teacher who keeps children back and explain that as it is not his belief maybe he could spend time writing his own 'prayer' in which he says he is grateful for things etc but does not aim it at a God he doesnt feel exists.

OP. We had this problem (and would have had to move many hundreds of miles or pay for private education to avoid it). Our village school is very religious, but my sons attend it because they are part of the village community.
DS1 was very vocal about his atheism from an early age. Perhaps more unusually, he is also very knowledgeable about relgion, and in particular, Christianity because DH lectures in the history of the church. This compounded the problem because he had the ability (unfortunately) to point out to teachers that a certain aspect of their faith, for example, only dated from the sixth century....
We discussed the whole issue with the (very religious) headteacher and received reluctant permission for the following: DS1 would stand still and quiet during prayers; and we would reinforce an ethos of tolerance at home, which would be reinforced in class as well.
We were offered the opportunity for me to attend school at prayer time (ie in the morning and at lunctime and at the end of the school) to remove DS1 from the classroom and supervise him until the prayer was ended. The headteacher seriously considered this to be our best option. He was surprised to hear that I worked full time.
Things got better as DS1 learned that tolerance is a two-way street. There was only one episode that sent us back into the school later on - when on a ski-trip in P6 DS1 and his best friend (who had decided to be a Rastafarian that year) were put together in a bedroom described by the headteachers as the 'pagan' room.
He is at secondary school now, thank goodness. Actually considering doing RE for a standard grade because he is actually very interested in the subject.
In the meantime, DS2 started school this August....

Parents not agreeable to the teaching of morals come off it. What true moral value would parents object to? Unless they were the Kray family maybe.

And most schools (primarys at least) still have to have assembly which is often an 'act of worship, christian in character' with hymns and prayers. The non-faith school I've paid for my DD to go to certainly does. We tolerate it, as do the Muslims and Hindus.