Religion in state schools

I think it is certainly time that church and state were separated in the UK and the Church of England was disestablished. I don't think children should be compelled to attend a "broadly Christian" act of worship at school and I don't think a bunch of men in frocks should automatically have rights about making laws. It is entirely up to parents if they want to raise their children within a particular faith and schools should teach religions in the same way as they teach history or biology.

There was a report last week that half the schools in the country were in breach of this law. The law has evolved into an ass.

I agree that there should not be faith schools. If all schools closed on a Friday afternoon at 1:00p.m the churches /mosques /temples/ synagogues/ meeting housesb/ secular clu etc could all run a faith schools. Job done and teachers get their Planning, Preparation & Assessment time then and it reduces costs for schools as they do not need to provide cover staff!

Wish I was minister of Education!

Agree with absent religion should be banned from all schools. The only thing that should be taught is the Psychology of religion. How and why religions are formed, how they are past on from one generation to the next, why people choose to join a religion. Once the pupils understand the theory of religion, they are then free to make up their own minds, before then it is just indoctrination.

What a good idea penstemmon. Children would then not be separated by religion during school hours. The so-called free schools are only making this situation worse. I wish you were Minister of Education too!

I went to a Church of England school where we had an assembly every day mainly to convey school messages. We had one prayer and a hymn and I enjoyed singing the hymns which I can still remember today. Girls of other faiths could opt out but to be honest not many of them did because it was so low key. I can't personally see a problem in fact I am disappointed that younger DS went to a school that never had a proper Nativity play just some modern version about a camel or penguin or similar!

On an intellectual level I agree, schools should be free of religion. On an emotional level though I agree with seasider, I loved the hymns and the assembly at my old school. My children all attended schools with a Christian ethos hence hymns for them too. Very useful for weddings and funerals.

I just felt that the assemblies we had taught me a set of values that I still try to adhere to. Some of my happiest memories of school are of nativity plays and Easter plays [we had a real donkey one year]. Never felt I was being indoctrinated in any way, but then I've never found the Church of England [or whatever it's called now] to be that sort of religion anyway. And, as those choir programmes that were on recently show, singing in a group is good for people. I don't feel that the Church of England has 'rules' other than teaching people to be nice to each other [or maybe any other stuff went over my head].

Sel The wedding and all but one of the funerals I have attended this past year have been entirely secular - not a single hymn nor a prayer at any of them.

It's possible to teach about morality and values/ethics without any reference to religion. That's what schools should do. I agree with simtib.

Most people who belong to a religion do not choose it, they just belong to the religion of their parents.

I am opposed to sectarian schools, and certainly think the 'act of worship' law should be repealed. My memories are of singing doom-laden tunes with Victorian pompous words... and envying the Jews and Catholics who were able to miss it.

I can't help thinking of the slogan "If you don't pray in my school I won't think in your church".

Disestablish!!

I see no problem with having assembly in schools - but I agree that religion should not be part of that assembly.

However, I do think that people should be able to choose to send their children to a faith based school if they wish, and those schools should be free to choose the children that attend that school. As I understand it, at the moment they are only allowed to choose 50% of their intake based on faith. This means that some parents who want their child taught in a faith based school are denied that choice.

There is much controversy in my borough at the moment as a catholic state secondary school has been given the go ahead, I completely understand the secular argument against faith schools, particularly in a time when there is an ever increasing lack of places.

I went to a state catholic primary and an independent catholic convent where in retrospect, I concede I was brainwashed, but it was absolutely what my parents wanted and a secular school would have been an anathema to them. However, having said that I did have complete freedom to choose my friends outside school, many who lived up and down my road who were not catholic and that was not a problem for them. I also don't remember ever being told I would have to marry a catholic, marrying a non catholic was quaintly referred to I think as "mixed marriage" and the understanding was that you as a catholic naturally imposed that religion on your offspring, regardless of whether or not this is what your spouse would want. My husband is not a catholic and when we did have children together I did moot the idea of having them baptised as catholics my husband was opposed as he felt that they would have to take on the whole lot on and invariably, they, like me, would undergo a degree of brainwashing, he also didn't want any unncessary fears being instilled into them, which I had to agree was the case when I went to school. However, his granddaughters from his first marriage have gone and are going through a couple of the premier catholic high profile London state schools and he has conceded that they are much better than the local non faith comprehensive where our children went. I did say to my younger son that I wished he had gone to one of them, but he regards himself as an atheist having read the whole Richard Dawkins argument and said that he would have hated to have been brought up a catholic.

My children went to a Church of England state primary, where I was actually quite impressed with the way they were taught religion, it was quite different from my experience. Their school included quite a lot of teaching about the Judaism as well and on the whole I think religion was taught in quite a positive way, I think it is quite good to have some sort of understanding about religion without having it imposed on young minds. I think this is where faith schools may come unstuck I am thinking in particular of the Islamic ones. I gather from my step grandchildren catholic state schools are not quite as ghastly as the ones I went to and they do have to subscribe to the government's sex education programme for example, which would never have happened in my day. Finally, on a positive note about my schooling I remember quite wistfully how lovely the mass was in Latin and in spite of never being taught that as a subject I am glad I have an incy wincy smattering of it today.

IMO, education should be secular. Religion should be the business of the home, if anything.

Tegan - I used to feel as you do, but no longer find the Cof E benign.

I have come to think that it is quite unacceptable to teach children about people driving nails through someone's hands, hanging them from crosses, drinking blood (even though as adults we know this is symbolic) etc. When you stand outside all the subliminal brainwashinhg and cultural conditioning that we have all been subject to, and look at it all objectively, it really is quite revolting to be subjecting primary age children to all of this.

If parents feel this is OK for their children, then in a free country no-one is stopping them from teaching this to their children within the family or church, but to make it compulsory for all children to go to school and for those schools to teach this stuff whether we like it or not - suerly that cannot be right?

Is that not one of the differences between Catholic and Church of England, Mishap, that Catholics believe in transubstantiation, that the wine is the blood of Christ and the bread is his body, rather than represents?
That's what I was told anyway, when I taught in a Catholic school.

Mishap I do to a point agree with you that small children learning about Christ's prolonged and painful death can be very upsetting, one of my sons came home aged about 7, with a description of the "crown of thorns" and Jesus being nailed to the cross and said "that must have been quite unpleasant for him" I smilingly thought at the time, a gross understatement if ever there was one! I recall being quite affected, by not only that, but learning about the gruesome deaths of various martyrs when I was in primary school and it did occur to me at the time, I wouldn't be that brave, I'd just convert to whatever, rather than be put to death in that manner. However, history per se is littered with barbarous acts of cruelty and sadly not all of them are in the distant past. Crucifying was a death that the Romans handed out and if children are to learn about them as the imperial power that they were, then this would possibly be one of the things that would be included, it depends on the child I suppose as to how they are affected.

Different children would indeed be affected in different ways - but why subject them to it in the first place? There can be no justification whatever for that. Teach them to be kind, full stop.

I am sure I have posted on Gransnet before about the terrible upset caused to my DGS when the normally 'benign' C of S school chaplain, who usually brought his puppets into school to tell stories about Noah and Baby Jesus, suddenly at Easter hit the NURSERY class with the full Easter story in all its gory detail. The bit that really got to DGS was the notion that God's only son had to die horribly in order to save everyone else. DGS was convinced that he, an only son, would have to suffer this fate in order to save his loved ones - Mummy, Daddy, wee sister and Grandparents.

As the Chaplain's visits were in the same spot as the Dentist, Fire and Road safety people, etc. the children were encouraged and accustomed to taking what they said as the 'gospel truth'. Having to explain that the Minister was only telling 'stories' diminishes the vital messages that the other visiting professionals are trying to impart.

I have always believed in secular schooling in state schools. Technically, you can ask for your child to be excluded but in practice this is never taken seriously. The only option that was offered to DD when the entire school,which includes Catholic, Chinese, Moslem children, were marched off to the Church of Scotland for end of term service, was to keep him off school for the whole day.

Mishap, aside from religion, I can remember my children being taught history in primary school where aspects of that would be considered quite "bloody" to say the least. I do agree that that the nature of Christ's death is possibly too much for very young children and could be the stuff of nightmares for some of them.

When I was at school in Scotland, although we did have an assembly - hymn and a prayer - in the morning, lip service was paid to RE. All the teachers were expected to take a class in it. We had our Maths teacher who didn't seem to have much of a clue. She set us to prepare a talk on any religious topic and at the time there was much controversy about Morals without Religion. I read all about it (must have been all of 13 at the time) and prepared my talk. I was quite hurt when she stopped me only a couple of minutes into it. I never knew why - maybe she thought I was about to preach atheism!

Unless the Chaplain was trained as a teacher he should not have been invited to talk to the children. I began my teaching career teaching RE (the emphasis being on the E ie Education not indoctrination) in a Church of England secondary school but my training taught me to avoid doctrine and personal opinion and it certainly was not biased towards any one denomination. The emphasis was on Christianity but it was taught historically with the added dimension of exploring the spiritual side of the students' nature by allowing them to discuss and develop their own views.
I was not trained in primary education but as far as I remember the emphasis there was on teaching about Jesus as a kind man( who was much kinder to women than many people of his day). Theology and crucifixion need not and should not play a part.

I don't agree with the 'teaching' of religion in schools if that means indoctrination into one faith or another. I suffered enough of this when I went to school. But I do agree with celebrating our cultural and religious feasts and learning about religions.