Atheist Mum

Well, the meeting with the head teacher… Hmm, what to make of it. His position was basically that the school doesn’t push religion nearly as much as other schools in the area, and that if there was to be an inspection of the school tomorrow, they would probably by pulled up for not complying with the government guidelines regarding collective worship. Alarmingly, he told us that there is to be an inspection next year, and he agreed that there will probably have to be an increase in the amount of religion in the school in preparation for it. Terrific.

That aside, he said that in his opinion were there to be a debate about religion within the school community, the likelihood was that when it was over we would end up with more religion in the school, rather than less. In other words, back off. If we push our point, he seemed to be saying, we’ll only have ourselves to blame if it backfires and we end up with more religion in the school — something he claims not to want any more than we do. He was at pains to stress that he is a public servant, just doing as he is told. (Mmm… only following orders? Where have we heard that before? It certainly seemed to strike a chord with my husband, who pointed out that we are living in volatile times, with fundamentalist religion causing huge problems across the world, that there are times when you need to stand up and be counted — maybe this was one of those times. And I thought I was the one passionate about all this). We said that whatever the outcome is likely to be, if there is to be a debate we want to make sure our views are part of it.

He was very resistant to the idea of holding a humanist assembly to counter-balance the fundamentalist assemblies our daughter has been subjected to, saying that it would not be the school’s policy to invite people in from outside the school to conduct assemblies. When we suggested finding someone from within the school community to hold such an assembly he was non-committal.

On the subject of RE we were bemused to find that he did not know whether RE lessons included anything about non-theistic worldviews, especially in view of the fact that I wrote to him some weeks ago on this matter and the meeting had been arranged for a good few days. He did say that he would find out, and although again he was non-committal, he didn’t seem to have an objection to such subjects being included.

Again, he was at pains to stress that the school has nothing to do with setting the syllabus for RE, that it is the responsibility of the local SACRE.

Where we feel we had more success was when we told him about the incidents in the playground. The school has a very good policy of using assemblies to discuss issues — bullying, racism etc., — which have come up in the playground, and he agreed that the incidents would fall into the category of things that might be dealt with in such a way, especially when we pointed out to him that if our children had been challenged about their religious beliefs, rather than just about their beliefs, the school would be very quick to deal with it.

What struck me throughout the meeting was the language used. Non-religious people were consistently referred to in the negative. They were ‘non-believers’, ‘those without beliefs’, ‘people of no faith’… Eventually it started to really grate on me. As parents, we have made a positive choice to bring our children up without religion, as atheists and as humanists. We do believe (though in scientific fact, not in the supernatural), we certainly have beliefs (humanist ones) and we most definitely have faith — in ourselves and in humanity. To continue to portray us in such a negative way is… well, at risk of sounding like some of the religious nuts who have had their knickers in knots lately… an insult.