It's all about God

[andrewducker]

ciphergoth pointed me at the piece here on mandatory school prayer (still a legal requirement in the UK).

[Poll #1396727]

The train of thought presumably goes like this:
1) Children should be trained to do the morally correct thing until they are old enough to make their own decisions.
2) Praying to God is the morally right thing to do.
Therefore) Children should be trained to pray.

I can't see that lasting much longer, when the majority don't believe (2).

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite getting how you get from the requirements of the law, which say nothing whatsoever about prayer, to 'mandatory school prayer'. It is, obviously, nonsense; there is no prayer in either of my children's schools, there has not been in any school they've attended, and I'd be astonished if more than a tiny handful of non-faith state schools have any prayer at all.

The junior school, in particular, used to have a profoundly Christian head, to the extent that they did a passion play as well as a nativity play. But no prayer; and as far as I can tell they reacted to the multicultural nature of the school by having equally respectful and thoughtful assemblies for the special holidays of every other faith represented in the school as well. None of which had any prayer in them, needless to say.

Don't get me wrong. My kids have been taught all sorts of rubbish at school. But it's not, by and large, been in the religious part of the curriculum. Johann Hari's article is complete tosh; at this point, I've seen so many articles by him that have had zero factual content that if I believed something he wrote I'd make sure I had another source.

[andrewducker]

"each pupil in attendance at a community, foundation or voluntary school shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship."
and
"the required collective worship shall be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character."
Does worship not mean the same thing as prayer here?
I may well be misunderstanding here, but that's what it looks like to me:
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=2281166

According to OFSTED 20% of schools do actually follow this.
http://www.archive2.official-documents.co.uk/document/deps/ofsted/170/05-secondary.html

Certainly the schools I went to as a child did on a daily basis, and it seems to be the legal standpoint, just one that's thankfully ignored more than it's followed.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It's meaningless without the current guidance, which now clarifies that 51% of assemblies should have 'broadly Christian character' -- and then goes on to explain that discussions of virtues which are typical of Christianity count. So if you get people in a room and talk about giving cans of soup to old people, that will do, no discussion of actual religion required. So. Harmless. If your child at one of the few schools that actually requires prayer, then discussion with the governors is probably the way to go.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't think it makes sense there to equate worship as prayer. In that context I'd expect 'worship' to be singing songs (what many Christians actually call praise).