07.20.10

Things I wish I had more of #1: Political Power

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As I’m 16 and cannot vote, I have to find other ways of making my views heard. At the moment this amounts to sending emails and generally annoying my local MP. I recently sent an email about a law which states that all schools must provide collective worship, which I am very much against. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, the worship is usually Christian so exclude children of other cultures. Also, I think that a separation between religion and government is very important. Once you start to mix the two together you favour one group of people simply because of their beliefs. I think in schools children should be taught about all religions but not forced to worship. Also, this worship includes children from 4 years old and up. I think that it is wrong to force religion onto a child of 4 who can’t possibly be old enough to decide which religion (if any) they want to follow.

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting anything to come of this email, when I saw this on my doormat.

I took a photo because I thought the envelope was cool.

The contents, however, was not very cool. It read

Dear Ms Grosso,
Thank you for your letter dated 6 July regarding EDM 395 and collective worship.

Going well so far

All Maintained schools should provide for collective worship and religious education (RE) for their pupils. The precise nature of the collective worship and RE at a foundation or voluntary school will depend on the religious character of the school

I don’t think that schools should have any religious character. They should be secular, as I said earlier. But then I suppose that’s an argument for another time, I’m going to focus on the collective worship in schools.

I understand from the Department of Educations that, under current guidelines, collective worship is an oppurtunity for pupils to “worship God

So we are to assume that every child has a religion? What if the child was brought up without one? Shall we just exclude them?

reflect on values that are of a broadly Christian nature and on their own beliefs,

Now let’s exclude all the non-Christians as well

develop a community spirit,

I fail to see how this is done by prayer. I can think of so many other ways this can be done as well.

a common ethos and shared values, consider spiritual and moral issues and respond to the worship offered”. These are all areas that I believe are very important to the moral areas of our children

Again, you don’t need to force kids to pray to consider moral issues. How about a discussion as a class about a topic, where you can get differing opinions from different cultures? (Correct me if I’m wrong, but) Prayer is silent, you don’t get any other viewpoints to challenge your ideas like that, which is an important part of considering moral issues.

I’m also kinda worried that she’s also suggesting that you can’t consider moral issues without religion, which as an atheist I find a bit insulting. I have no idea what “a common ethos and shared values” involves because there is no verb, but I’m sure that you don’t need to pray to have shared values.

It is the responsibility of the Head Teacher to ensure that children undertake daily collective worship, mainly of a Christian nature, unless this is inappropriate for the school, in which case they must apply to local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) for a determination to have this requirement lifted.”

This fact that the requirement lifted is good, but you shouldn’t have the requirement in the first place!

Assemblies are an oppurtunity for the whole school to come together as one community and they are vital in allowing heads to demonstrate leadership and a sense of direction for their schools.

I agree with this, even though my head teacher’s assemblies are bloody boring.

I believe that Britain’s multi-faith society is a real cause for celebration. To me, the different faith-groups that exists in Britain today play an important role in enriching our nation.

So let’s celebrate them by not excluding them during the collective worship which is mostly Christian.

I also think the best way to celebrate is through education of all religions, and atheism too. Children should be allowed to practice their beliefs in school if they want to (for instance, I know Muslims may want to pray during the day), but it shouldn’t be forced on them.

Religions help cement local communities together and can encourage the neighbourly society that too often seems to have been eroded.

And in one sentance she has managed to isolate me (a non-believer) from the rest of the community. Is she saying that it’s atheism’s fault that society has eroded? Or is it that you need to be religious to play a role in community? A survey said that 19% of people in the UK are either Atheist or Agnostic [1], which is quite a large chunk of the population, and you can’t just exclude them like that. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’m sure there are many other ways to bring a community together than forcing religion onto children.

We can only benefit from our religious diversity if we sustain the freedom for these religions to reflect their differences,

I would say that forcing kids to worship restricts their religious freedom, particularly as most worship is Christian, excluding non-Christians, but also because many pupils will be non-believers (especially once you get to the later years in secondary school). Religious freedom is important, but I really don’t see how collective worship maintains that rather than restricting it.

and it is for this reason that I won’t be signing the EDM.

Yay, I have an MP that supports restricting religious freedoms!

(This might be a bit of a controversial second entry. I hope I haven’t said anything overly offensive.)

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/pdf/wtwtogod.pdf