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

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

I'm obviously against this. But I went to two Church of England schools, and actually enjoyed prayer time; the teachers made no attempt to enforce any religion at all, and it ended up simply as a couple of minutes of quiet reflection.

(Of course, this being Oxford, most of our teachers were progressive atheists. I suspect it might be just a little bit different elsewhere.)

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Assuming referring to Easter services etc, there was an unspoken rule at our school that if it wasn't your thing, you just didn't go. Some teachers insisted that you had to, but for most, as long as you didn't make a big deal of it, it was fine.

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Who is this majority you speak of? The majority of pupils in schools are believers, particularly now that 25% of school pupils are now from minority ethnic or religious groups for whom religion forms a key component of their identity. The majority of teachers are not, alas, the progressive atheists your friend from Oxford mentions, but committed to a policy of inclusion that actively seeks to sanction religious bigotry in the name of multi-culturalism.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

wow, that used to drive my dad mad when I was at primary school. Our secondary school didn't bother with it, but instead got some guys with a guitar in to sing about Jesus twice a term.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

It does vaccinate some people against religion.

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

I was one of those very annoying children who refused to pray at all once I realised I was being forced into it. Basically when I was 8 I had some kind of mini epiphany and decided I was an atheist vegetarian hahaha!

My poor parents....

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

*blink* Wow, I'm glad the Australian schools I went to didn't do that sort of thing ...

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

1) Praying to God is the morally right thing to do. Therefore) Children should be trained to pray.
2) GOTO 1

is probably more accurate.

[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.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I am bemused by your hatred for Christian-based schools - in my experience they do more to promote atheism than any other system in the world...

[cybik.livejournal.com]

We had religious assemblies in both my schools. I didn't enjoy it particularly and found it very boring (although it seems that I can remember the Lord's Prayer, so I clearly paid some sort of attention).

Small children are liable to start believing in things they are told.. Trouble is that once it gets a grip it's not necessarily something that can be got rid of easily..

Actually, in primary school I remember singing the lyrics of "2 Minutes to Midnight" to the tune of the hymn we were supposed to be singing, though, so my parents obviously made sure I wasn't indoctrinated.. ;)

[daisyflip.livejournal.com]

I'm spending a lot of my time in primary schools with current job, and it's interesting on the huge variance between them. Generally, the schools which have saints and Jesus plastered all over the walls contain kids with a really bad understanding of science. I should point out, of the very many schools I have been to, this only applies to about five very Catholic schools. However, those five had nothing but religion on the display walls and had very strict, miserable teachers who made the children have lengthy prayer/Christian training sessions every day.

I like the idea of a quiet, reflective period - I think that can help hyper-kids who'll have no time away from noisy technology at home - but generally education which over-emphasises religion is wasting precious time which could be spent learning how to give each other electric shocks. Mmm...batteries...