Religion in state schools

I agree that children need to learn about the different faith groups and also that some people do not have a faith. this is like Geog/history as it teaches about society/ groups etc. This can all be done in non-faith schools.

All primary church schools are expected to have a prayer corner /area and they do teach more about their religion. Islamic, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh schools also exist and it is this segregation that concerns me. Also the percepetion that Church schools are somehow better than non church schools because they can select a %age of students!

We had a very strong sense of moral values a the schools where I worked.
I worked in 2 c/e schools one I believe was a Christian school in that it served its community. The other was less so as it was highly selective in the children it offered places to. The assemblies were awful and the youngest children who sat at the front could not see the Head as he was on a stage and they sat so close all they saw was the wooden panels! I pointed this out to him and he said it was good discipline!

A particularly interesting psychologist once told me that being brought up in a faith environment was positive, as long as it didn't include oppression or indoctrination. Our discussion was in relation to a proposed adoption placement where the child's mother had expressed a preference for a family who would 'go to church and send her to Sunday school'. The mother hadn't had that experience and felt strongly it would help her child.
My grandson's went to a CofE primary school, it was the closest to their home. The school was over 75% muslim. In one discussion about religion, my 5 year old grandson said he would probably be a pagan, like his mum, when he grew up. Despite my worries about the increase in faith schools causing further separation between communities, I do believe that discussing faith and humanities are essential to children of all ages.

I agree with you wholeheartedly janthea and that is exactly the type of school I taught in. We mainly had Christians, agnostics ,atheists and Jews only because other religions were not obvious in our area in the 60's and early70's.The only thing I was slightly uneasy about was that we did say the Creed but this was pointed out to parents and it was suggested they did not apply if they were unhappy about this so the onus was put squarely on the parents. Sadly most parents were prepared to forgo their religious/anti-religious scruples for the sake of academia.

My daughters went to a school belonging to the Church Schools Company (Church of England), but they were never indoctrinated into religion. They learnt about all religions. There was assembly every morning and everyone joined in. There were Jewish girls, Catholic girls, Muslim, Hindu - all religions. They were allowed to miss the assembly if they wanted, but the majority of them attended. It was never hard core religion.

On Founders' Day the entire school went to the local church for a service and of course there was the Christmas Service. I don't think any of the girls missed these services. They all seem to enjoy them.

Neither of my daughters are religious and are, like me, probably non-believers. They both married Catholics. One is definitely against religion after being taught by Jesuits in Ireland. The other is a non practising Catholic. There was a lot of banter between us and he calls me a 'pagan' (not true!)

I don't think assemblies or classes on religion do any harm, provided it is not indoctrination. It's almost like history - the history of religion.

Yes faith schools have served the community so well in northern ireland haven't they and continue their glorious tradition to this day.

I'm unhappy about the increase in faith schools, as it seems to be leading to further separation of children who live in the same area.

This may be viewed as hypocritical, as my children went to state primary and CofE high school. My worry that the high school may be oppressive in regard to faith was totally misplaced. All the pupils studied RE/Comparative Religions at GCSE. Pastoral care was good, the school experience was good. My children enjoyed school, and within their wide friendship groups, the young parents all want their children to go to the same high school that they attended. It fostered positive, caring and committed relationships, which is the route of everything in my view.
There are real difficulties in moving to a non sectarian education system. I can't imagine it happening in the near future, with the increase in Free Schools and Faith Schools. I'd support moves towards removing all faith based schools. I'd like to see comparative religions being taught as an academic subject. The learning from the various faiths can't be underestimated, it forms the bed rock of so much social behaviour.

(They did also have Comparative Religion as a subject.)

My own children's school high school assembly wasn't religious. It was moralistic. Thou shalt have empathy with thy school mates; thou shalt not bully anyone; thou shalt not drop litter; thou shalt be nice to animals, especially fluffy kittens; thou shalt not be a smug bastard if thou gets thy homework right; etc. Seemed to work.

Agreeing with you mishap - very important to learn about religion as it has shaped history and continues to shape politics etc
It will be a brave government that repeals the relevant legislation though.

I too think that it is fine to learn ABOUT religions and the role that they have played in the development of the human race; but children should not have to join in worship with a specific religious bias. They should not be involved in any sort of worship, exept that which their parents choose for them to be a part of out of school.

Why should a state school that has no religious affiliation insist that the children worship anyone or anything? It makes no sense at all and is totally undemocratic. Where can parents of no religious affiliation or indeed who are atheists send their children to school? - they are paying through their taxes for the child's education and should not have this unwanted "add-on."

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Disestablish!!

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".

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.