Non denominational school - ds asked to curb his atheism in RE. Quietly seething.

[Piffle]

Last yr in yr 7 RE was world religions, a history of religious developement, balanced, well debated and sceptics were given equal floor time and embraced even.
now in yr 8 they focus heavily on Chrisitianity, had no issue at all as thought it was been done as a "history" type tpoic, not a We Must All Be Good Christians and Believe in God.
DS is a cynic, sceptic, and very dismissive of the god concept, being a scientist has only helped him along his path to purgatory.
He regularly challenges concepts in class, which last year was encouraged
the school does not hymns, prayers or anything
RE is COMPULSORY at GCSE at least as short course, which is also sticking in my throat as it means ds will have to drop a subject he really likes ...possibly.
So anyway enouh rambling
His RE teacher told him yesterday to keep his non Christian thoughts in his head.
Now he did wait until "any questions" session of the lesson. His questions were not offensive, related to the lesson etc
Am frankly baffled

No, I understand it isn't an easy life to be a teacher, but it really isn't unreasonable to expect her to deal with relevant questions from an interested and engaged pupil. That is, frankly, what a teacher is engaged to do. If she can't do it without telling him to (effectively) shut up, then she is not doing her job and she was right to apologise.

Oh he has the debating skills down pat and was used to having quite colourful exchanges with the other teacher in the past.
He has no probs with the work for RE, seems to enjoy many aspects of it infact.

He is now analysing why he was upset at being termed "non Christian"

Piffle, I think he is great. The problem for him may be that "non-Christian" defines him against a set of values that are meaningless to him, just as "atheist" defines someone by a negative reference to God - which is why I am uncomfortable with that label. Theism never enters the picture, so atheism is meaningless .

Interesting concept
He certainly is loathe to be defined by any label it would seem
But we have always described ourselves as having Christian values inasmuch as commandments and laws and so forth
So it makes for an interesting discussion, that your belief in "something" or someone could define you outside of how you behave as a human being.
He raises the same issues with Catholicism and the Confession etc