lavendersparkle | (no subject)

Let me tell you a story. A new head teacher arrives at a school and changes the way the school does assemblies. Some parents are annoyed at the change and complain. A bit later the head teacher resigns for reasons unrelated to assemblies. Usually this sort of a thing might fill a few columns of a local newspaper next to a description of a local fete. However, if the story involved Muslims, suddenly it's national news. It seems somewhat reminiscent of the school pantomime rescheduled due to rehearsal schedule clashing with some children's days off scandal last December.

School assemblies in England are a bit odd anyway. Officially assemblies are supposed to be a "daily act of worship" either involving the whole school or divided by year group. Neither I nor any of my friends experienced anything quite like this at any of the schools we attended. For a start, it wasn't daily. For most of my school career I'd be required to attend about two a week. Secondly, the only time my secondary school assemblies approached collective acts of of worship were the Christmas and Easter assemblies which the school Christian Union were allowed to be in charge of. The rest of the time there mainly consisted of the head teacher reading out school sporting results and any other announcements, briefly preceded by a 'thought for the day' style anecdote, the moral of which was invariably "and that's why you need to do well in your exams/don't do drugs/don't bully each other". Generally the whole enterprise was seen as a colossal waste of time by staff and students alike. They seem to usually be a pointless remnant of a bygone era but any attempt to officially abolish them would be accusations of causing the moral decline of the nation, so instead we keep them on the statute books but do them in the most half arsed way possible. Compared to that, surely allowing some of the children to engage in a collective act of worship which is relevant to their family's faith is a vast improvement.

It reminds me of an idea I had for multi-faith schools, the aim of which would be to have the things people like about faith schools without the segregation. You'd have a few faiths club together, say Jews, Muslims and Catholics, and the children would have most of their classes and play time together, but separate into their respective faiths for worship and religious education. The school would take into account the needs of the faiths of its different pupils, so, for example, the canteen would be kosher and halal and the school would shut down for all of the holy days of the religions it was made up with. I think this is a modern, mature approach to integration. It accepts that we can work together and interact in most things but that we are different in some ways and it's OK for us the be separate for those things. A bold statement that people shouldn't have to pretend to be secular Christians to feel at home here. That's the kind of school I'd like to send my children to.

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My Junior School assemblies were pretty much a daily act of worship.

I'd love the kind of school you describe. The closest thing I've come across to it is King David School in Birmingham, a Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim, so they get their own prayer room, Muslim teachers during Ramadan and are wished Eid Mubarak in assembly. It would be great to go even further than that.

Edited 2009-02-10 20:31 (UTC)

I went to a talk by one of the Muslim parent governors of King David's. It seems that places at King Davids are hotly sort after b a lot of Muslim parents, some of whom move into the area to be able to send their children there.

I don't remember my school assemblies being boring. We had secular assemblies on Monday and Friday, with a talk by one of the more senior boys, and religious assemblies on Wednesday, which I never attended, having Jewish assembly instead. (We had about three Jews per year of 130-plus.)

One year, in the run-up to Rosh Hashana, they had one of the senior boys give a talk about Rosh Hashana in the Monday/Friday assembly. I got there late, which meant I didn't get a seat, and was stuck behind the First World War memorial organ, which meant I didn't see the shofar sitting beside him on the table, and was caught absolutely by surprise when he sounded it at the end. The sound, unexpected as well as in that unfamiliar environment, absolutely electrified me—the effect the shofar is supposed to have, but, really, the only time in my life it's had that effect for me.

I think schools have no place giving acts of worship. If you want an act of worship you are, naturally, free to attend any relevant place-of-religion. I am entirely against faith schools and faith *in* schools. I think that faith schools (of any faith) put the faith of the parents above the free will of the student - and that doesn't just go for kids who choose atheism, it goes just as much for the child of Christian parents who has decided to convert to Islam and yet who is sent to the Christian assembly.

Children who agree with their parents' faith are presumably provided ample opportunity *by their parents* to engage with that faith. I think school needs to be a place where children aren't forced to engage with any faith, but where they can engage to their chosen degree with any faith - that does mean providing a kosher alternative at lunch (and a vegan alternative, and so forth), it does mean allowing faith required items of clothing to fall within the uniform code, it does mean allowing students (and staff) to take days off when needed by their faith, it does mean providing a room for students to pray in during the school day, it does mean scheduling exams so they don't fall on anyone's holy days or during fasting periods (it should be easy enough to ask the students in order to find out what range of days are available for the student body you actually have in front of you). But I think that it quite definitely doesn't mean putting the students in the position of having to attend a daily act of worship.

I think a weekly assembly is useful - to distribute notices and hand out awards and so forth. Good for community spirit. I think that such gatherings should contain no statements of any faith (or explicit statements of lack-of-faith) as a matter of routine (perhaps faith groups could be allowed to present pieces about their holy days at appropriate times of year) in order that the *whole* school community be able to engage equally them.

I think that faith schools (of any faith) put the faith of the parents above the free will of the student - and that doesn't just go for kids who choose atheism, it goes just as much for the child of Christian parents who has decided to convert to Islam and yet who is sent to the Christian assembly.

You're assuming all parents are very authoritarian, and all children are very weak. There's no way my parents would have tried to force me to follow their beliefs or lack thereof, and there's no way I would have agreed to if they did (unless I happened to have the same opinions as them anyway). Maybe you're right and most families do work like that, but it just seems so weird to me.

I think school needs to be a place where children aren't forced to engage with any faith, but where they can engage to their chosen degree with any faith...

I think it's reasonable to assume that this 'chosen degree' might for some include communal acts of worship.

Yes, some people might want to engage in communal acts of worship - firstly, they could organise a lunch-time or after-school club for the purpose; secondly, they could attend a place of worship in their own time (or indeed, take time out of school to do so if the worship schedule is important and overlaps with school).

Assemblies are *mandatory* and in my experience mix the faith-based aspect with the "well done Anne, on getting into the county under 16s netball squad" aspect. Which is really annoying. Perhaps one could hold separate religious assemblies that students could opt to attend if they liked, thus providing an option for that kind of group worship.

My parents put a large amount of pressure on me to obey the outward forms of Catholicism, my parents also attempted to limit my exposure to non-Christian beliefs and ideals. It was largely through attending a secular school that I was exposed to many of the ideas that I now think are important and many other ideas that I have personally rejected but came to understand that other people think are important; of course I would have been exposed to those ideas eventually anyway, but I think that it's important that young people are exposed to as wide a variety of ideas as possible.

I did attend a Catholic primary school for 4 1/2 years - I don't remember much of it really, I was very young, but I do remember that the few CofE kids (and the sole non-Catholic teacher) at that school had to put up with a great deal in terms of the constant "Catholicism is the ONE TRUE WAY" rhetoric. Now, maybe, most faith schools are not that pushy... but still, it's not the sort of environment I would want to encourage for children.

Shouldn't religious education, if not worship, be broad? There is more reason to learn about religious practice and belief than you practice it yourself

I think that there are two issues with that. The first is that religious minorities live in a world in which they are constantly bombarded by the concepts and values of the dominant culture, and I think the desire to counter-balance this in school as well as at home is very reasonable. The second is that some religions strongly encourage members to have quite a high level of knowledge of their faith. If a Muslim child isn't getting that at school she may well have to spend a lot of her evenings and weekends in madrassa. Given that religious education can incorporate key skills, I think it makes sense for Jews to prefer schools where Ivrit and Biblical Hebrew are language options, just as French and Latin are in most schools. None of that prohibits teaching children about other religions, but it makes sense for a community to want to teach them most about their own culture and faith.

In terms of worship being broad, I find that problematic. The issue is that it's very difficult to come up with a form of worship which really is neutral. In most British schools the communal act of worship is just a watered down Christian act of worship with the words 'Trinity' and 'Jesus' removed. It's nothing like how Jews or Muslims or Hindus worship. I'm not convinced that many non-Muslim parents would be happy if the 'broad' worship involved kneeling and prostrating to say vague religion neutral prayers. If we did manage to get to something in which no faith dominated that is inoffensive to everyone I imagine is being a bit like the holidays play in Southpark. I also think that, on a deeper level, it's representative of a philosophy of how multi-faith societies work which I disagree with. It says 'we're all basically the same' and then tries to mush up our faiths together to make something bland and meaningless. I think it's better to be open and celebrate our differences and show that we don't have to be the same to be able to cooperate in a vibrant mutually beneficial society.

Your idea of a school sounds brilliant.