Indoctrination

There's a story breaking today about a couple in Oxfordshire who have removed their children from assemblies at a local primary school because they object to them being told by teachers that Christian mythology (i.e. Noah's flood, Crucifixion/Resurrection, Good Samaritan etc.) are literally true. The couple claim that the school made their children take part in Christian prayer and watch re-enactments of Bible stories. It seems as though the NSS have taken up support for their case in offering a legal challenge to the school board for not providing their children access to inclusive assemblies representing a plurality of people having many faith based traditions and none.

I suspect this is quite a common issue among primary schools run by Church organisations, my own children had Christianity forced down their throats on many occasions, both by evangelical teachers acting on their own and also by the institutions themselves in the form of compulsory worship etc. My Wife and I were fairly relaxed about it since we have raised them to think critically for themselves and fortunately (so far) that seems to have acted as a kind of inoculation against this kind of thing. Like most parents we have no issue at all with religious studies, in fact my Son ended up doing an A-Level in Religious Studies, Philosophy and Ethics and found it to be his favourite subject (the Philosophy bits at least) The real problem here are teachers teaching young children in a state funded organisations that idea that their supernatural "beliefs" are true. No one has a problem with people believing whatever they like or even sending their kids to private religious schools, but, in a modern pluralistic society they shouldn't get the right to indoctrinate everyone else's kids with those beliefs on the taxpayers dollar.