I found out this morning that my children have been saying prayers before lunch...

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We deliberately chose a non-church school (most of the local schools to us are church schools) as we are not religious and did not want our children educated in this way. In fact it is a community school.

But today DS told us that they say prayers before they go for lunch. DD (who is now in the juniors, so was there for 3 years) confirmed this... She knew the words off by heart.

Now I am not happy (at all) about this, and neither is DH.

My question is should I complain?

This is such a tricky subject. On many occasions I have felt like mentioning certain practices that go on in DS's school which I find inappropriate for a non-faith County Primary school. They say a prayer in assembly and at the end of the day, he seems to learn a great deal about Christianity and no other religions, they do a Nativity play each year... Even writing it down here makes me sound nuts for objecting to it. The point is, DS doesn't have any religious affiliation, and neither does his school, yet he's being taught nothing but Christianity when it comes to religious education lessons.

Yet I still feel that if I mentioned it they'd think I was a Satanist or something.

I think that is odd, at my dcs' school they learn about judaism, sikhism, buddhism etc and have visitors from those faiths. And they are at a Church School.

Swanriver: I think you are absolutely right that the better educated (and more egalitarian) a society is, the less need it has for superstition. ONe of the functions of superstition is to keep the 'lower orders' in their place (by telling them that Great Pumpkin made them to be the servants of their betters, and/or telling them that they will be rewarded for their subservience once they are dead).

'Yet I still feel that if I mentioned it they'd think I was a Satanist or something.'

They wouldn't-they would refer you to the education act that gives them no choice.

I think that telling DCs that it is superstition is as bad as telling them there is a God. No one can prove either way. The most you can do solidgoldbrass, is say 'I believe that it is all superstitious twaddle'-in the same way that a Christian can only say 'I believe that there is a God. The DC can take all opinions and make up their own mind when they are ready.

Nicely put, piscesmoon!

V interesting thread.

I just don't like 'the thought police' either way.
I don't think it is acceptable to say "you can't believe in God because Mummy says it's superstitious nonsense"-or "Mummy is a Christian so you have to believe in God because Mummy says so".
You can only control your own thoughts, you can't control your DCs thoughts. Lots of deeply committed Christians come from atheist households and vice versa.
I don't actually think that collective worship is desirable in schools, although it doesn't bother me, but I do think that RE teaching is important.

My father believed (and still believes, I imagine) the same thing, in terms of 'up to children to decide' - but made the mistake, in an attempt to do it differently from his parents (liberal Jews), of not talking about any sort of beliefs at all. Which meant that my siblings and I felt confused and lost when it came to spiritual and/or religious beliefs and/or identity: it was too much of a vacuum to form ideas in, really.

School, then, just taught the Christian basics with a nod at what 'some other people believe', so that didn't really help - I knew we weren't Christians, and therefore felt excluded, but had no other frame of reference to 'belong' to.

I think active, honest conversations and open-mindedness at home, and at school, would have helped me make my own mind up...they do this at dd's school, as far as I can tell, and we try to do it at home as well. Of course, I can picture the dds posting on MN in 30 years time, saying we got it all wrong

You think you have it bad... in my DC's school there is something much worse going on: girls of 8 worrying about their weight; girls talking incessantly about their favourite shops and nails; celebrity culture pervading kids' conversations; focus on the here and now, and SATs results of course; what school there are going to or not...... the odd prayer is hardly going to hurt them particularly as state schools are required to have a act of worship "mainly Christian in character". If it acts as a counterbalance to the me, me, me culture then all well and good I say.

Elibean, think my parents had similar views, determined not to bully us, very lapsed. It did create a spiritual vacuum at the heart of family which had all sorts of repercussions. I'm so glad that there WERE were simple prayers in our non-church school when I was growing up, and hymns.

Learning about all the faiths is essential. Being taught that spirituality is an essential part of any rounded human being is essential.
Being taught that Jesus died for us or that God created the world in 7 days as fact is very wrong. Being taught that some people believe this is essential.

piscesmoon said: 'in the UK, state and the church are intertwined, the Prime Minister appoints bishops, the Queen is the head of the Cof E etc. State schools have the state religion'

Just to point out and bring in another of my bugbears - but there is no UK state religion. CoE applies to only to the part of the UK state which is called England. The Education Act (whatever year) referred to earlier does NOT apply to Scotland.

Anyone interested, google the Covenators. In Scotland, state and religion are separate because it was seen that religious belief is a matter for the individual rather than the state to prescribe.

As in France, I think. All rooted somewhere in history (shows how much attention I was paying to history, or religion, or anything else much, whilst at school...).

Seeker, succinctly put and I agree with that, too.

dd1 (5 and in YR) said to me just before going to sleep 'some people believe god is a person, a very powerful man with a white beard who sits and floats around on a cloud - my school told me that, and they know about everything'

swanriver, it took me years to figure out all that...its hard to define a vacuum, no? Should be a 12-step recovery program for people who grow up in spiritual vacuums, methinks...

Sorry Finona-I was getting carried away-Cof E of course is only England. I always try not to say England when I mean Britain, but this is one case where it is definitely England. The Scottish school system is different so I have no idea what they do about collective worship. The education act I mentioned is England and Wales (I am not sure how it works in Wales).

But surely the answer to the "spiritual vacuum" doesn't have to be Christianity? Or any other religion, for that matter? I believe very strongly that it is possible to have a sense of transcendence without involving God.

I am also a little surprised that if I posted a thread about schools policing lunchboxes, it would be flooded with posts saying that a school has no right to dictate whether or not a child eats a chocolate biscuit on school premises, but people seem quite relaxed about the concepts that schools are putting into their brains!

Entirely different seeker, a DC is hungry and has to eat what is in the lunch box, there is nothing else. Each DC is different and the brain in a wonderful thing. If a whole class is told one thing they will probably interpret it 30 different ways. You can't put something into a brain-the brain makes up its own mind which is why it is a good thing to have lots of different ideas and opinions rather than just you mother's opinion.
As a child, able to have great philosophical discussions about why we are here, life after death, the fact that many of our greatest thinkers in history and today have a belief in God, I would be a bit annoyed if my mother brought it down to the childish level of 'imaginary friends and superstitious nonsense' and expected me to fall in line just because it was what she thought.
Of course it kept the lower orders in place at one time, but we can all read now and have freedom of speech so it isn't relevant. No one will mind in the least id a child doesn't pray but they will be expected to keep quiet and respect the fact that others are praying.

I thought before I had children that they were rather like blank pieces of paper to write what you wished but I found early on, as babies, that this wasn't the case.

I questioned ds1 (8) about creation. Who created world? God he said. What about dinosaurs? God created them he said. But why not mentioned in Bible I said? Oh, they just aren't. He saw no problem with God creating dinosaurs a long long time ago, before man, despite reading that God created man and woman as per Genesis. I think he has absorbed it as two parallel truths, one fact one symbolic truth.
They do dinosaurs as a curriculum topic in KS1.
I still don't see that prayer is to be thrown on creationism bandwagon.

But I really don't want my child to come home from school saying AS A FACT that God created the world. I am happy with him being told that some people believe that - while other people believe other theories.

It's crap that human beings 'need spirituality' ie need to be peddled some or other myth about imaginary beings.
I went to a CofE primary, and not only was the education useless but I still remember my seething resentment at all this bollocks they kept peddling and the sheer boredom of all the church services.

Agree, Seeker, I don't think the answer to vacuumitis is to provide one particular religion, or say one thing is true. I do think its important to talk about beliefs generally, that people have them and always have, what some of them are, and why they might be important...ie to get kids (and adults) thinking for themselves etc.

I just think an absence of structure or framework is as potentially crippling as an overbearing one. Not sure there is an ideal solution.

Should qualify: absence of structure or framework to notice, feel, articulate our own thoughts/values/beliefs in.

SGB, sounds as though your CofE school was being overbearing rather than supporting enquiry!

I went to a CofE junior school where we said prayers and sang hymns in Assembly every day, and said grace at lunch. Once a week Vicar Virtue turned up to lead Assembly. Hasn't turned me into a zealot. I veer between Atheism and Agnosticism.

Ds goes to a non-denominational school which seems to include an awful lot of Christianity - he comes home telling me about God making this and that, or that we should thank God. I don't mind too much - he's five, he'll be exposed to a lot of other influences and it's important to learn about your cultural heritage.

Only time I complained was to object to them raising money for a dodgy charity that is actually out to convert Muslim children. And they backed down when I provided proof about what it was up to.

When Christianity has been erased, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.