Johann Hari: "Dear God, stop brainwashing children"

[ciphergoth]

Johann Hari, The Independent, 2009-05-08

Dear God, stop brainwashing children

Why is worship forced on 99 per cent of children without their own consent or even asking what they think?

Let us now put our hands together and pray. O God, we gather here today to ask you to free our schoolchildren from being forced to go through this charade every day. As you know, O Lord, because You see all, British law requires every schoolchild to participate in "an act of collective worship" every 24 hours. Irrespective of what the child thinks or believes, they are shepherded into a hall, silenced, and forced to pray – or pretend to.

If they refuse to bow their heads to You, they are punished. This happened to me, because I protested that there is no evidence whatsoever that You exist, and plenty of proof that shows the texts describing You are filled with falsehoods. When I pointed this out, I was told to stop being "blasphemous" and threatened with detention. "Shut up and pray," a teacher told me on one occasion. Are you proud, O Lord?

[...] I am genuinely surprised that no moderate religious people have, to my knowledge, joined the campaign to stop this compelled prayer. What pleasure or pride can you possibly feel in knowing that children are compelled to worship your God? Why are you silent?

[...]

Are there prominent religious campaigners on this issue in particular or State secularism in general that he's not taking into account? Are they getting articles in the national press, or trying to? Pointers welcome!

Comments

[djm4]

Well, I'm not sure if it falls quite into your defintion, but we (the Lib Dems) passed policy on this at out last conference. 4 (d) (iv) of this paper says (in respect to faith schools):

"Requiring schools who choose to hold assemblies to ensure that any act of collective worship is optional for pupils who are old enough to decide for themselves and otherwise for parents."

For the record, both lizw and I voted for this, and were very happy it got passed. It got broad support within the party, although there was some controversy over it and a couple of amendments were defeated (I really must blog on that on Dreamwidth at some point - my arm wasn't up to it at conference itself). Obviously as Lib Dem policy it's never going to get widespread media attention, but it's there as part of our schools policy anyway, for what it's worth.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's definitely a step forward. AFAICT all the religious people I know well are secularists, so I don't understand the lack of more prominent exemplars in the media.

as Lib Dem policy it's never going to get widespread media attention See, I really would have thought that anyone with religious bona fides would have no trouble getting an opinion piece arguing for such a change into one of the broadsheets, but perhaps I'm wrong? 

[lizw.livejournal.com]

The media seemed to want the story to be OMG LIBERALS WANT TO BAN ALL FAITH SCHOOLS!!!! AND PROBABLY EAT BABIES!!!! (Not that we don't have a small minority who'd like to ban fee-paying faith schools, but the substance of the debate was all about state-funded schools.) Or failing that, OMG LIBERALS WILL FORCE KIDS TO BE INDOCTRINATED BY ISLAMIST TERRORISTS!!! AND PROBABLY EAT BABIES!!!! There really wasn't much interest in subtlety, as far as I could tell.

I've never tried to get a religious opinion piece into the broadsheets, but I do have experience of trying to place business pieces, and that's quite tough - especially if you're perceived to have a commercial or, I imagine, a partisan interest.

I'm finding it difficult to Google articles on this by Christians without bringing up a lot of mostly-irrelevant stuff like individual schools' collective worship policies. Fwiw, this piece quotes the convener of the Church of Scotland's education committee as being against compulsory worship (as well as another C of S minister and also Richard Holloway, but I think the latter had stopped identifying as Christian by then.) C of E bishops do tend to be pretty hopeless on this, though, unfortunately.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

It got broad support within the party

Yes, and I think it's worth mentioning that this includes the support of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum, who have been working very closely with the Humanist and Secular Liberal Democrats on educational issues.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

In which case I hope the LDCF will write a letter to the Indie saying "excuse me, we're over here!"

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I will e-mail them and suggest it.