Which way around should it be?

Birdy12

milliebear00001 wrote: »

Unless the school is breaking the law, then there will be an act of collective worship which must be broadly Christian in nature.

It is a statutory requirement unless you apply for a special exemption (usually because the intake is overwhelmingly of another faith).

My DS started secondary school this year. Amongst the many bits of paperwork we received, one stated that the school offered two things which parents could opt their child out of if they wished. One was sex education and one was a daily act of worship.

Interestingly, the leter stated that, currently, all parents had opted for their child to receive sex education, however, all had opted their child out of the daily act of worship.

The school is non-demoninational.

For the record, I didn't realise that it was 'lawful' for a school to provide a daily act of worship.

Personally, I don't see why it should be provided at school. There's plenty of time outside of school hours to practise your faith.

euronorris

Spendless wrote: »

What happens in assemblies? Do they sing hymns? Mine don't attend a church school but it has a history connected to the church, as in when the original village was here, mentioned in the doomsday book, schooling originally was in the rectory, later becoming a very small CofE school still in church grounds, when a factory based itself here and built houses for the workers, a larger school was needed and at that point it become a community (non-faith) school. As such my kids still have Assemblies similar to when I was a kid, with hymns mixed with more seasonal songs and Bible stories.

From memory, assemblies at my primary school were long, boring and uncomfortable.

We would be filed in, sat on the floor in our class groups and had to sit with our legs crossed and our arms folded for the duration of the assembly. If we talked, we had to put a finger over our lips, and the assembly would last for an hour.

There would be a mixture of hymns, readings and the headmistress usually going on about something (I forget what, I had usually tuned out by that time and was seeing how much talking I could get away with!).

I lost count of the amount of times my legs lost feeling sitting in that position for that long. I can remember trying to stand up once, and immediately falling straight back down because my legs were completely numb! :rotfl:

jellyhead

We had those assemblies too.

I know that the school head says a prayer but it's not daily, possibly not even weekly. They get a visiting vicar (from different churches, all christian) to come in once a month to lead assembly and that is a religious one. JW's probably sit out of those, I don't know because it was a different head when I was a volunteer and the old head didn't mention religion at all. My 5 year old came home and told me the easter story last year and I remember being surprised because apart from the nativity play I didn't realise that ordinary schools mentioned the bible at all nowadays.

Last year I volunteered in a catholic school and I did think at the time that my 4 year old would have struggled to sit still during the 45 minute mass. It was in a church though, so they didn't have to sit cross legged which my boy finds uncomfortable. There were prayers twice a day to a cross on the wall and an alter in each classroom. Art activities and even the wordsearches on end of term days were all about bible stories or themes. It was a nice community and the non-catholic children seemed to like it, some of them even asked their parents if they could have first communion because it was talked about in class, with the whole school celebrating which children were taking it.

My son's school is nothing like that but they are christian, perhaps it's up to the head?

Lunar_Eclipse

mildred1978 wrote: »

well, I'm sure I'll manage to cross that bridge when I get to it. I won't be conforming for everyone else's sake. That applies to taking him to McDonald's or buying him a play station too. Just because "everyone else does it" doesn't make it right

Good. I really hope you don't, because somehow it's so easy to let these things slide, even when you try your very hardest.

Whilst I don't have an issue with McDonald's, or playstations for occasional entertainment, and am doing fairly well in bringing up my children in the way in which I'd like, I still occasionally get a glimpse of how on earth did we let this happen...

There is no question that I'd do some things significantly differently if I had my time over ... and the eldest is only 11!:D

barbiedoll

milliebear00001 wrote: »

Your original post suggests that British broadcasting ignores Christianity because the boss is a Muslim. That's pretty offensive I think. Not to mention rather 'divisive'.

I don't think the article I posted is sad at all. To me, it's a healthy sign that most people recognise religious belief for what it often is - an excuse to concentrate on people's differences and fight ridiculous wars over bits of land.

Personally I'm delighted that two thirds of people in that report don't consider themselves religious. Perhaps that's the real reason why the 'Christian' bit of Christmas has been largely abandoned and ignored - because Christians are now very much in the minority in this country.

I didn't say that because a Muslim is in charge of religious broadcasting, I think that's why Christians are being ignored, I just posted the link because it caused uproar at the time of the announcement and some posters may not have been aware of it. It doesn't matter to me who is in charge of religious programming because, as an atheist, I don't watch any of it.

If you read my post, I stated that I didn't think that religion should divide people, although in many cases, it clearly does. Some religious groups tend to want to see themselves as separate from society, hence the faith schools and the separate court systems.

I thought the poll was "sad" because so many people thought that religion was a force for bad rather than good. Surely the point of religion is for people to come together to worship who or whatever they believe in, it should be of no consequence to anyone else. Those who choose not to follow a belief system should not feel threatened by those who do and vice versa. I think that most wars over "bits of land" are exactly that, they use religion as an excuse, not as a reason.

Personally, I'd be happy to see the back of ALL religions, to me, they are as archaic as believing in horoscopes, worshipping tree spirits and burning witches. But that's just my opinion, I don't expect everyone to agree with me and as I said before, we're extremely lucky in this country to be allowed to have the choice. (Except for burning witches, obviously!)

claire16c

Torry_Quine wrote: »

The difference is I don't know of people marking Eid who aren't of the muslim faith and it certainly hasn't become an excuse for an all out party.

But on Dec 25th many people are not marking Christianity either. They are just marking 2 bank holidays and time off work by having parties, giving presents etc. And then doing the same thing for NYE a week later.

But, that doesnt mean they dont know where it comes from.

And really you should be glad that most people are marking 'it' whatever that might be to them, because otherwise there would be a lot more posts like the 'day off for eid' post on the employment board.

Torry_Quine

claire16c wrote: »

But on Dec 25th many people are not marking Christianity either. They are just marking 2 bank holidays and time off work by having parties, giving presents etc. And then doing the same thing for NYE a week later.

But, that doesnt mean they dont know where it comes from.

And really you should be glad that most people are marking 'it' whatever that might be to them, because otherwise there would be a lot more posts like the 'day off for eid' post on the employment board.

That's what I'm saying. Giving presents isn't marking it, it's as you say enjoying the time off work.

It doesn't follow that people marking it less would mean more people needing time of for eid and I don't see why it would.

mumps

dirtysexymonkey wrote: »

indeed you should. christians chose this date because it coincided with the pagan festival and thus made it easier to convert (or massacre) the pagans to christianity. how dare you tell people to pick another date when you refuse to acknowledge the truth about the date your cult picked!

this just goes to show how many christians are nothing like the christ they claim to love.

I think it is great that people celebrate a pagan festival, I have been to some, but why call it Christmas? I wouldn't call Easter Passover or say I am celebrating Diwali when I put my Christmas lights up. If you celebrate solstice for example why not say that?

It really isn't about saying people can't celebrate in December unless they are Christians it is about people saying Christmas isn't a Christian festival because it is although there are other festivals at the same time or close to it. If your wedding anniversary was on the same day as my birthday would you celebrate your anniversary by inviting people to a birthday party for Mumps would you?

Just edited to say I think that sounds complicated and I hope it makes sense, I can't think how else to explain it.

milliebear00001

mumps wrote: »

I think it is great that people celebrate a pagan festival, I have been to some, but why call it Christmas? I wouldn't call Easter Passover or say I am celebrating Diwali when I put my Christmas lights up. If you celebrate solstice for example why not say that?

It really isn't about saying people can't celebrate in December unless they are Christians it is about people saying Christmas isn't a Christian festival because it is although there are other festivals at the same time or close to it. If your wedding anniversary was on the same day as my birthday would you celebrate your anniversary by inviting people to a birthday party for Mumps would you?

Just edited to say I think that sounds complicated and I hope it makes sense, I can't think how else to explain it.

But in this country, Christians have have chosen to incorporate pagan and other elements into their own religious festival. The Christmas festival itself is a mash of lots of elements - some originating from the Christian faith, others from elsewhere. That's history. The only difference is that most people celebrating now don't believe they are celebrating the birth of the son of God.

In modern times, many of the things people think of as meaning 'Christmas' are not actually related to the nativity at all. The name is clearly Christian - but that's it for many people. Personally I don't think it's going to make any difference what people call it - it's what they believe that counts, and most people simply don't believe the Christian nativity story.

Lotus-eater

mumps wrote: »

I think it is great that people celebrate a pagan festival, I have been to some, but why call it Christmas? I wouldn't call Easter Passover or say I am celebrating Diwali when I put my Christmas lights up. If you celebrate solstice for example why not say that?

IIRC alot of people started calling it Xmas and having non christian images and what happened? Yes everyone got on their hight horse because it wasn't being called the proper name and not enough was being done to show the true reason for christmas. We can't do right for doing wrong, it seems to me.