I don't know if they're meant to but I think it sometimes happens anyway depending on the teacher. My kids schools, (state, non-religious) teach the big 5 religions and do the usual celebrations at Diwali, Eid etc. Once a year the schools go to church for a carol service but all the kids are given the option not to go. I think it's a shame they don't go to a mosque or a gudwara or a sinagogue as well.

Being from a typical Irish family, I attended religious schools all the way, from catechism lessons in the convent at the age of three, through to an all-girls convent school when I left at 16. My own children certainly don't, nor will they attend religious schools. I would also argue with Jacki B that they teach tolerance, the emphasis in mine was that anyone not a catholic should be pitied.

So yes, faith schools are an anachronism.

I'm not irish, but my school was 100% catholic and other religions did not exist. I remember we had a teachers asking us to name other religions, and we couldn't name any.....
Also, our religion teacher was a mad homophobe.
Faith schools should be illegal, or at least not funded by the state. In Holland faith schools get more money and resources than public schools, years of christian democrats in government made sure of that.
I resent that.
Faith schools also don't have to abide by equality laws but are allowed to fire any teachers who's way of life does not concur with faith teachings. I resent that.
I don't mind lessons in 'world views' or religion, to be honest I consider my self a catholic (and not just religious in the 'oh I believe in something' sense, but I don't buy the homophobe or anti-condom/sex crap they peddle), but keep them out of the rest of the classes that are tought. Humanism is the way.

In Small J's area of Ireland, ironically, the state operated faith schools, typically run by nuns and priests, are now closing and being replaced by schools which favour the more general European model. At the top of her parent's road St Attracta's opened about 18 months ago and although the name may suggest a religious aspiration the staff are all professional teachers. This is not to denigrate the professionalism of the nuns and priests who taught at the convent and abbey schools that St A's replaces but it does suggest a step change in education in one of Europe's most strongly Catholic countries.

But you know it was always odd, that my cousins raised in Ireland, the same age as me, seemed to have a much less dogmatic education than I did. I think perhaps, that the nuns thought, that because we were in protestant England, albeit in the bit of Irish North London, that we needed the dogma drilled into us more.

Ireland has changed beyond belief now. As late as 1990, my mixed-race nephew caused a stir in Tullamore, with some people asking to touch his hair (after they'd established it was a boy). Whilst that level of ignorance isn't around anymore, it seems to me there is definitely a wave of racism occuring. Which is the most ironic thing, seeing as how Ireland exported it's youth all over the world, for decades. Except of course, irony's meant to be kind of wry or funny. And the way ethnic minorities are being treated over there, is anything but that.

Ofsted chief says scrap law on worship
Rebecca Smithers, education correspondent
Thursday April 22, 2004
The Guardian

State schools should no longer be required by law to hold a daily act of collective worship and should be free to decide the religious content - which has to be wholly or mainly Christian - of any assemblies, the head of the government's education watchdog said yesterday.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/ofsted/sto...65,00.html?=rss

Caertainly incoming asylum seekers/economic migrants are poorly treated to the point where the leader writesr in the Sunday INdepent and some of the other more traditionally liveral voices in the Irish press are writing hand-wringing pieces reminding their readership of the very facts that you raise.

I think it is changing, albeit very slowly. Ireland's change from being an agricultural based economy through manufacturing and into a wider-ranging economy based on those two and highly skilled and serviced industries has been relatively fast and social change goes at a slower pace but does tend to catch up.

toby! remind billy what his password is and tell him to read the forum occasionally!



said billy in the guardian today!



or are we the chosen few

Reminds me of David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day":

During the course of one warlike language class, his fellow students try to explain the concept of Easter, in beginning French, to a baffled Muslim classmate:

The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. "It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and ... oh, shit." She faltered and her fellow countryman came to her aid.

"He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two ... morsels of ... lumber."

"He good, the Jesus."

Anyway, I was astonished to find out about the "daily act of worship" stuff in British schools.
Absolute nonsense. Religion does not belong in schools. Frankly, the insistence of fundamentalists of all religions to send their children to religious schools strikes me as a massive insecurity about their own religion.
I have, in fact, been wondering what the hell I would be able to do to keep my child away from this if I ended up with a child in school here in England. It's entirely wrong.
I do not believe there should be any impediment to people practicing their faith, that's on their own time, not in a publically funded school system.

my school is integrated, but "with a christian ethos" which basically means having christian chaplains and sitting through assemblies about jesus once a week. i think im not alone in my complete disregard for this aspect. loads of people dislike the constant, pretend not to be in your face but it is, christianity.

theres other faiths at the my school as well and no provision seems to be really made for them. nor the atheists. it prides itself with being integrated, but in my own opinion true integration would have to involve an entirely secular education, or an entirely all-encompassing diverse array of theologies and philosophies imparted to those who want to listen, but not forced against yer will

peace out

This happened to a boy at my primary school in deepest Kent. Thankfully I only went there for a year after moveing from South East London. It's amasing how different things are just down the road. One TEACHER even said to my MUM 'of course we didn't know what you'd be like coming from London; you could have been from a council estate!' God forbid! I must have been the first person they had met from London, and this boy the first, to put it politicaly correctly; ethnic minority.
My teacher also suggested to the class that we 'might well think jews are stupid', and they had some very strange ideas about the caribean 'so you see it's not atall primative- they have fridges!' Frankly the whole counties mad and possibly inbread (but not so smelly as London) and segregating children any further will breed even more ignorance. Schools are here to nurture happy adults!

When we really go past multiculturalism, we won't need faith schools - no denominational ones - outside of the school of life generally. I'll just be sitting above it all, anyway, watching the people move around underneath, having a direct hand in things personally, the most possible, as is my want, greatly, and you'd better let me do it!

Well said, my dear Wilso.

Faith schools divide people. Is that what we really want
in 2007? If we are all going to learn to live together
peacefully then we need to have christians mixing with
muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, etc.

Even in so-called secular schools that I attended
we all had to sing hymns and say prayers. This didn't really
endear me to ANY religion. I was afraid to tell people that
I am an Atheist, and this is what many religions thrive on,
they are fully aware that not everyone believes in a god, or
even the same god, hence if you can shame people into
keeping quiet then so much the better for them! But why
is it OK to speak proudly of your "faith" but us Atheists are
expected to "keep silent" over our lack of belief?

I think either there should be no religion taught in schools
OR we should all be taught that there are many religions
AND people that aren't religious.

Roxy641

That's what happens now.

As a militant atheist, I think that there should be no such thing as 'faith' schools. The French have got it right: state and religion kept separate.

I don't know enough about the French system to comment on their system specifically, but I would agree that state and religion are better kept separate. There was a time when even the Christians felt this way too (Mathew 22:21 and John 18:36). In this country, our forefathers enshrined this separation in the First Amendment to our Constitution.

I agree that their should be a seperation of church, but in the true meaning of the turm, no state religion. Faith schools, at least in their current form in the US, do not violate this principle. No one is force to go to catholic school. Citizens are not required to be batized at birth. The US provides a public secular school system.

Who actually expects atheists to keep quiet? The school I went to taught about religions in exactly the way you describe and I don't think anyone would have batted an eyelid at anyone expressing atheist views. And I'd say that it was a typical "bog-standard" state comprehensive of the 60s/70s/80s.
And I'd say atheism was now not just acceptable but downright fashionable..

The problem is that secular states historically seem much more likely to breed fundamentalism and bigotry: France has had difficulties in integrating minorities that are arguably more severe than the UK; when secular France was being torn apart by the Dreyfuss case, the UK had a Prime Minister of Jewish origin.
Israel and India are both nominally secular and have had problems of inter-communal donflict of different kinds. Fundamentalism in Iran emerged from the Shah's relatively secularist regime.
And the US as you say, was founded on a separation of church and state, yet seems to have far more problems with Christian fundamentalism than the UK which botched up a remarkably successful religious settlement over a couple of centuries from about 1580 onwards - notwithstanding the Troubles in Ireland.

I think most of the people in the faith schools wouldn't want
anyone that didn't believe in god to speak out.

I wasn't brave enough to mention that I am an Atheist and
certainly not at the Catholic school I went to for my last
two years of school education. I honestly thought I was
the only Atheist. And I never heard anyone else mention
they were an Atheist, so it isn't like I felt I would have had
the backing of school friends etc.

I don't sadly share your optistic attitude regarding it being
fashionable. Besides, things that are "fashionable" also go
"out of fashion".

Roxy641

My catholic school was practically athiest as far as the other kids were concerned I remember.

If anyone is interested in a polital discussion about religion and militant atheism you can watch it here. It starts off a bit slow, but half way through they talk about some of the anti-religious views that are popular now, (like Andy Larter and Sarah Lady have put foreward).
(I think it's good anyway.)

I believe in free education for everyone, but I think that if a so called 'faith school' is to exist, it can't be state funded unless:

a. there are schools for each and every faith available to each and every child (completely impractical)
or
b. the faith schools are run by private institutions (leading to private education - wrong in my opinion).

On this evidence, it seems faith schools ought not to be allowed. This isn't because of the multiculturalism of today's society that I believe this though, as I'd think the same if the only known religion in the UK was Christianity or any other faith.

Schools should be about knowledge, not faith. Knowledge of faith i.e. religious studies taught from an objective point of view can be taught, but just as education seems to be creeping into brainwashing children with whatever the government wants them to know, so faith schools don't give them the chance to form their own beliefs.