Whilst the school is a non religious school the head is a born again Christian and insists on the children praying twice a day. We’ve told our son that he does not have to pray as have many other parents, however they feel that they have to.
They say grace to thank god for their milk and fruit, we’re trying to teach him to say thank you to the person who gives it to him, that mummy and daddy work hard to pay for taxes which buys this milk etc. but he, like many 5yr olds thinks that the teacher is always right.
What do we tell him? How do we balance out the brain washing?
Posted: May 21st 2009
Eric_PK
There are a few obvious solutions to your problem.
First, work with the other parents to get things changed.
Second, find a different school.
If neither of those are practical, then I think the best thing to do is to expose him to the teachings of many religions, and make sure you include a lot of the wierd stuff. That will generally help immunize him against overt belief.
Posted: May 24th 2009
George Ricker www
First, I agree with the others that you, along with the other parents who are concerned about this, should raise the issue with the school board, if this is a public school, or with whoever is in charge, if it is a private venture. It is an unconscionable abuse of authority for a school official to attempt to impose religious views or practices on a child in a non religious setting.
It’s also important for you to begin presenting your child with alternative views. I would use a socratic approach. Ask questions. Find out what your son understands about ideas like “god” and “prayer” and build on his responses. Research various organizations like American Atheists, Freedom From Religion Foundation, American Humanists, and Council for Secular Humanism for materials that may be helpful in answering children’s questions.
The most important thing is to encourage an attitude of honest inquiry and freedom of conscience. This is a great opportunity to spur your son’s intellectual development, always keeping his age in mind, by teaching him about the value of reason and rationality in addressing the issues he will confront in life.
Children have a natural curiosity about the world around them. Even very young children benefit from having that curiosity cultivated.
Posted: May 22nd 2009
bitbutter www
To add to the excellent suggestions about how you can foster critical thinking in your son; when he’s a little older you could ask if he’d like to go to a summer camp like Camp Inquiry.
From their website:
Where others may see turbulent seas and dangerous impasses, we see opportunities-to create, to forge new paths, to open new communications, to tell new stories. And the best part is, the tools have been around for ages: science, reason, and skepticism remain the best means by which to navigate these unpredictable waters.
Posted: May 22nd 2009
Paula Kirby www
I’m sorry to hear of the difficulty you are having with your son’s school. I think religious brainwashing in schools is one of the most pressing problems there is – it is a real abuse of power on the part of the headteacher.
I agree with Logicel that there are two different but complementary approaches you could use to tackle the issue.
The first is to approach the headteacher and express your serious concerns at the imposition of religious belief in this way. Explain why you think it inappropriate to force such beliefs on children. It seems that there are other parents who agree with you, so it would be good to enlist their support for this too.
If the headteacher is unresponsive, you could escalate the issue to the school governors and also to the Local Education Authority. (I’m basing my suggestion on the UK education system.) If that fails too, there is the option of writing to the local press, seeing if you can be interviewed on the local radio station – generally raising awareness of the issue in your local area. These would be fall-back options though – it’s important to deal with the headteacher direct first of all, to give him or her the opportunity to resolve it amicably before you go public. But the more parents you can get on your side, the better, so it’s definitely worth trying to work out how much parental support you would get. After all, you are likely to be taken much more seriously if there are a substantial number of you who object and are prepared to say so openly.
The other approach is of course with your son. It’s difficult because he is so very young, and no doubt your goal is to ensure he understands that belief is optional, and something he can make up his own mind about when he’s older, rather than to force your own unbelief onto him. Not easy when the other side are less scrupulous about respecting his right to decide for himself!
There are a couple of books I could recommend, both written for children. I think they’re both aimed at slightly older children than your son, but you could perhaps go through them with him, or simply get some ideas from them and then put them in your own words, more suitable for a 5 year old. The first is Humanism, what’s that?, by Helen Bennett, and the second is more of a pamphlet than a book, and rather expensive for its length but very good, called What about gods?, by Chris Brockman. Both are available from Amazon.
In the meantime, one idea might be to start lots of different conversations with him, encouraging him to think about how we can know things. How do we know hedgehogs hibernate? How do we know water turns to ice when it’s cold? How do we know about the Pyramids? How do we know what lions eat? How do we know that two and two make four? How do we know that chocolate tastes nice? That kind of thing. On reflection, you could turn it into a game, by making silly claims such as 'This sweet is yellow’ (when actually it’s red), or 'The grass is made of wool’ or, over lunch, 'Mmmm, this hippopotamus is delicious’ – anything to get him challenging and thinking how to show you’re wrong. Then, when you’ve established a pattern of one silly claim after another, with him telling you how silly you are each time, and why, you could say one of the things the teacher says, such as, 'This milk has come from God’ – and see whether he can apply the same challenging process to that as well. If you can get him laughing at the idea and putting God claims in the same category as 'hippopotamus for lunch’ claims, you may well be half way there!
Once he’s got used to the idea that knowledge comes from things we can test for ourselves in various ways, you could perhaps ask him how it would be possible to know that there’s a god. You could ask your son to imagine that the teacher had told him he (the teacher, I mean) could fly. Would your son believe him? Presumably not – presumably he’d want to see it with his own eyes. And from there you could gently lead on to the question of God. His teacher believes in God but many many people do not. How might we know if there was a God? What questions could we ask to find out? And are the answers really good answers, or are we just being asked to take them on trust, without being able to check for ourselves?
Another tack might be the question of where milk and fruit REALLY come from. The teacher says they come from God, but where else might they come from? Depending on where you live, perhaps you could take your son on a farm visit, so he can see cows being milked, and fruit growing on trees, and meet the farmer who does all the work, and who can explain about the need for sun, rain, etc.
In a different conversation you could perhaps get him thinking about volcanoes, and looking at pictures of what happens when a volcano erupts, and explain in simple terms how it happens. Then you could casually mention that in the olden days people used to believe volcanoes were caused by angry gods, and that people often used to thank or blame gods for things because they didn’t understand what really caused them. But now we do, and we know that they’re not caused by gods at all, that was just the way people tried to explain things before we had the real answers. And some people still try to use gods to explain things, but we have better explanations now – explanations we can test and check out for ourselves, so we know they’re true.
Good luck, however you decide to tackle the problem. I really do share your anger and frustration at the situation. I’d like to think that in years to come society will look back on this kind of childhood indoctrination with the same scandalised incredulity as we do now at the Victorian practice of sending children down mines and up chimneys.
EDIT: I have remembered another book that would be absolutely perfect for your purposes. It’s Maybe Yes, Maybe No: A Guide for Young Skeptics, by Dan Barker. Again, you can get it from Amazon. It would be much better than the book on Humanism that I recommended earlier in my post. It is an excellent introduction to critical thinking for young children and really would help your son to start asking helpful questions and testing what people tell him.
Posted: May 22nd 2009
logicel
I would suggest to confront this on two levels:
1) Using The System: Since you said that you have told your son that his parents’ taxes pay for his school food, I am concluding that this is a public school. If it is, then you need, along with any other parents willing to do so, to bring this constitutional violation of the separation of church and state to the attention of the local school board (I am only guessing that you live in America; if not, then utilize whatever rules/laws that apply in your country).
If it is a private school, then you and other parents need to tell the head of the school that you have placed your children in a non-religious school because you do not want religion, especially a particular kind, that is, the one of the school’s head, to be part of your children’s school activities and that you are dissatisfied with the services rendered and demand the services expected, that is, no religious activity for your children, be delivered. Emphasis that the head works for you and that you are a dissatisfied customer. Be cool and collected, of course. Polite, but firm and consistent.
2) Familial Elucidation And Support: Continue what you are doing in terms of balancing out the brainwashing. Explain that if your son feels he must do what the teacher asks, that it does not mean that he must believe in the god that the head believes in. Think of this as an opportunity to discuss with your son the diversity of religious beliefs. Keep it simple of course. Focus on that religious beliefs are chosen by adults, and as a child he has plenty of time to weigh the choices, including none at all.
If such a situation occurred in which you needed to start educating your son regarding sex, you would play an active role. This situation requires you to start educating your son on the existence of supernatural beliefs (start with Santa, unless of course he believes in that still!). Be calm and relaxed, emphasizing your love and support for him and your interest in his learning new things.
Posted: May 21st 2009