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Feb. 10th, 2009 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleLet 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.
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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(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-10 09:40 pm (UTC)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.