I do not believe any faith schools, Sunday schools or madrassas should be allowed by law.
I believe indoctrinating children with religion or politics is an abuse. It should be a crime.
There are many religions and institutes that are dying to get their hands on our children and fill their heads with dogma. As the Jesuits used to say ‘give me a child until the age of seven and I’ll give you the man’. Unfortunately that is true. Once the impressionable minds have been poisoned with pernicious ideology they can never break free. They are stuck with it for life.
I believe children should be free to develop. They should not be indoctrinated.
I believe parents should bring up their children in a moral background with love, tolerance and equality as the basis. They should be taught to respect all people, races, faiths and creeds.
I believe schools should concern themselves with educating children, not indoctrinating them. Religion should be taught as a subject which covers all religions factually, never giving credibility or weight to one over another. I believe atheism and humanism should be part of that curriculum and given equal weight.
I believe assemblies should never be religious. They should be moral.
I believe that when a child reaches adulthood – I would suggest at sixteen- their brains are sufficiently developed for them to handle concepts as weighty as belief. Only then should they be subjected to religious belief.
I think that is people substituted politics for religion and we had communist or fascist schools set up to instil their dogma into our children we, as a society, might have a view. For me religion is even more pervasive and pernicious.
Reblogged this on 61chrissterry.
Cheers Chris
I think 16 is a bit late if you consider that 16 is the age for leaving school.
People can now vote at 16 and in some areas of UK, have been able to get married for over 50 years now.
I would suggest at the age of starting secondary school.
No – brain hasn’t wired up until 21. It consolidates by 25. The logical time would be 25. But in my experience kids are generally capable of good thinking by 16. I’d go for 16.
I know you’re joshing me at 25! That’s a bit heavy duty protection considering it’s only a fairy story!
I’d never have put you down as a “banner of books”.
“Fahrenheit 451” or what !?
So I could do anything I liked except be taught the good book? That’s almost tantamount to sect behaviour itself.
Even 16 is way too late. Besides, it’s less than 10% in UK who even bother with it. Young people aren’t quite so easily led these days.
Indeed, other religions maybe different.
But I’m reminded of the song, “All The Young Dudes”
Billy (swap that for Ali) rapped all night ’bout his suicide
How he’d kick it in the head when he was 25
Don’t wanna stay alive when you’re 25
No. We’ve got cross-wires. I think that kids should be taught factual comparative religion – all the religions from 11. But any attempt to indoctrinate – such as happens in all schools by law – wholly Christian assemblies daily – and in faith schools the heavy version – the religious mantra, prayers, qur’an etc – should not be allowed to sixteen. There’s a difference. Comparative factual religion is integrating and reveals the stupidity. Indoctrination is abuse.
Which in itself could dissolve some hard boiled focus because at 16 I imagine most school kids are pretty much concentrated with their other chosen subjects.
Yep – I think indoctrination and cultural indoctrination perpetuates the myth. If people were to come to evaluate religion at an age when they were intellectually equipped to make decisions and process information we would have a far more rational set of responses. Those that wanted to believe could and those that didn’t wouldn’t be messed up.
Yeah – who wants to be an adult? You’re dead at twenty one. Once that wiring is in you’re hooked up to the death machine. Who wants to be old, rational and staid? Better to burn out than it is to rust. That chaotic excitement of youth when everything is possible and you live for the moment. Parents were fossilised. 25 was dead.
My Father was taught by The Christian Brothers in Cork, he had a very good brain and I used to say so to him he would reply “it was beaten into me” and it was, he was very very reserved and I often wonder now what else might have been done. I went through RC schools and oh yes indeed it is driven into you all the time, as it was my children. My Mother tried to make David think when he was grown up to be a Priest, she used to dress him up as a Priest and even made a little altar for him – I can’t tell you the arguments we had to no avail. He has not gone to mass for years, what it all did was drive them away as it did for me.
Anna, I have yet to get to know one Catholic, whether former or still practising whom has not been screwed up by this doctrine. It’s almost the same story over and over.
Or otherwise – in the case of a German lady I’ve known for 35 years. Boy, she is so full of it – it’s frightening.
It’s actually her husband who is a long term friend – he’s Irish ex-Catholic.
She had obviously been brought up into a most devout household.
Her house in London is full of little religious trinket junk and pictures of Jesus – white skinned, no less! A cross on the wall in every room, with hanging prayer scrolls.
When I first met this couple they had 2 lodgers, both young men that had been through children’s homes etc. They both went on to become priests and she kept in touch and would always tell me at every opportunity where so and so was etc. Like there was a chance of me catching a service or being remotely interested.
The last time I spoke to her was on the phone from Cyprus. I just mentioned I was going to Rome the next day and she exploded in excitement “are you going to the Vatican?”. No, actually I’m going to see Grinderman, the band (an off-shoot of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) who couldn’t be further from the ethos of the Vatican if they tried.
For all these years I kept teasing her by reminders that I was in fact a Protestant, a Scottish Protestant (whom again couldn’t be further from the ethos of the Vatican.) To this day I still don’t think she fully understands exactly what that entails.
But she does go on and on about the Pope – especially the last German ex-Hitler youth member) one. I had to stop her in the middle of her praise one day by saying “oh, stop it, get off the cross, we need the wood!” The expression on her face was priceless!
Each to his own…
Andrew, that is brilliant. My late mother would beat me with the bamboo cane she kept to her death, because I was so evil and would be made to go to confession every month, I used to make it all up. It does screw you up Andrew, to keep the peace with my mother after my husband died (we alL including my bitch sister lived in the same house) I would take my youngest Son, my eldest refusing good for him, to mass every Saturday evening, it never kept the peace but it would have been a lot worse had I not gone to mass. I never had fun as a young girl as I should because “it was wrong in the eyes of God” to my mother so I was kept under. I know now I married to get away from it all, didn’t escape it for long we all ended up living together when my father died. It’s all twisted like the church has twisted so many. I like this Pope not because he is Pope but because I firmly believe he is a very good man that cares and is trying to make changes. So all I can say Andrew is the church does an awful lot of damage to those of us who wanted more in life.
Anna – you make Catholicism sound like ISIS. I’m glad my parents were more enlightened. All those canes and beatings. It’s montrous.
Poor David. It’s a wonder he’s still compos mentis.
I am still laughing, ISIS well said. My mother used to show the boys the cane and tell them i did not get enough of it, there you go good Catholic with her rosary and crucifix on the wall. David is like you too quick for me.
Anna, bear in mind, some men quite like a good caning! There’s good money in it. At least so I’m told…
But they are sad, guilt-ridden, repressed individuals who feel they should be punished for wanting sex. They are victims of the repression.
Andrew, I had an Aunt who lived in Paddington she had come back into the family after disappearing for years. When my parents and my so called Sister and myself went to visit I was taken aback by all the whips,canes/ chains and handcuffs she had on the bedroom wall. When we left her flat I asked my Father what were they for he said she was “on the game” my mother wouldn’t have it because “Maudie was a good catholic” she had a “husband” who my Father said was her pimp – there you have it even in the best of catholic families you get all this, plus the crucifix!!
So what else could your mother offer as good reason for said equipment? I bet the good Lord couldn’t help her with that one!
Andrew it was her Sister so my mother did not believe my Father, we never went there again and when my Father died some years later this Aunt (along with another Sister of my mother) caused so much trouble even one who came to the funeral started trouble over what I wore my late Husband said to them “enough”, what I wanted to do was hit them. People like my mother used God to justify all she did to me.
There is no justification.
She was obviously a part-time law enforcement officer and lion tamer.
I think all that guilt and sexual repression results in these peculiar things like S&M. Sex is seen as dirty and related to pain and subjugation. Sex isn’t dirty; it’s an expression of love. It shouldn’t be mixed in with all this weird stuff. Religion can be so hypocritical.
i agree about faith schools. Shouldn’t be an option. Indoctrination of kids is just wrong.
Too true
Who was the lion tamer my mother or aunt – when that cane was coming boy I can still hear that noise the cane made as it came towards me.
Not a nice sound. When I went into teaching they were still using the cane. I got caned at school. It was dreadful. A barbaric and cruel thing to do to children. It instilled hatred.
Yes I believe it would. If I cried I was told I would get more, I see it to this day arm pulled back because I tried to stop her, I was always put between a cupboard and the wardrobe, small space but I see now it held me, 2/3 of them one was enough – even slaps left their marks and she was clever enough to hit where it would not be shown, lower back/upper thighs – such happy memories of childhood!!!!
Not nice at all. That is child abuse.
I never thought it was, I believed I was really bad. When a Dr I used to have got it all out of me he told me me exactly what you have just said
There is no doubt that it was child abuse. Your mother was so very wrong. Don’t allow her to still damage you.
Strange thing she never was punished by her parents she would boast how her parents never smacked any of them let alone use a bamboo cane – still puzzles me why, just hate for me I guess.
Some psychological problem. Who knows what twists people’s minds?
You know, Opher, your posts really make me think. But there’s only one thing standing between your desire for schools to be JUST educational institutions. That’s the fact that they’re run by subjective human beings. Kind of throws a glitch in the who idea, doesn’t it?
On local Glasgow news tonight was a report on a private Islamic school. It started as a primary with just 11 pupils and now has 65. They want to extend into secondary, they manage their own curriculum and have nothing to do with state education regulations.
They want public money to enable them to do so.
Personally, I think that will be a very long want.
Another state run Catholic primary that is to be closed has a strong RC religious group wanting to turn it into a private Catholic school, again run outwith the state education body.
Another 4 such schools will be making further applications in the new year.
This could see the eventual regression back to what used to happen to pupils that went to such fundamental religious schools particularly in Glasgow. They just didn’t get employed. If anyone had gone to a RC school, they would never get a job in the “professions” and a great many other industries. They were never going to be management potential and automatically classed as blue collar workers.
Of course this is bigotry, but the argument is that they themselves are the root source of such bigotry, therefore, what’s goes round comes around. They can’t have it both ways.
It should not be allowed. It is divisive and abusive.
Is anybody thinking of the children here, it sounds like Northern Ireland
Anna, there’s an extensive amount of history with this subject and too much for a short blog. In short, it goes back to the days of Henry VIII and Cromwell. People never forget. That’s the sole reason why the SNP is around today.
We never seem to learn. Division and segregation leads to problems.
What? This is a long blog!
In terms of explaining the reasons why would take an eternity.
It’s not exactly a yes or no subject.
I’m sure that you could succinctly gather the gist.
Easy. Protestants hate Catholics because of their beliefs. Scotland was 4/5ths Protestant (still is). Cromwell sent a load of Protestants over to NI to stir up trouble, they settled and caused trouble. Those in the south suffering big time from famine floated over to Scotland and became tinkers (many still exist today). They were never accepted because they couldn’t read or write, owned no land, no property, no real job skills etc. They were anti-social pests for stealing farm stock and crops to survive. They formed their own cliques (as if they had an alternative?) and cut off from pretty much everything as long as they carried on being RC. They didn’t want to integrate (very much like lots of Asians today) so nobody cared for their plight. That’s it in a nutshell and still the same today – in many areas, but not nearly so much in cities. I know people who wouldn’t piss of them if they were on fire. That’s the mentality of half the people in Scotland.
The football violence is just an indication.
That was very clear and succinct. The opposite was true in Ireland where the majority Catholics hated the Protestants (Orange Order) brought over from Scotland to rule them. They resented it for some reason. When you mix politics and religion you get a heady mix of violence.
I knew you could do it.
Yes, but the danger I feel is that somebody could misconstrue that I’m actually pro all this stuff, that I’m a full on ranting hating blue-nosed Proddy of the worst order.
I’d hate to think that could be the case. Don’t shoot the messenger!
No Andrew. They know you’re really a Ninja warrior.
of course, that’s the next phase after learning how to hold chop sticks. I’m really handy with chop sticks!
I’m a black-belt in origami!
Andrew, Good Morning – I know only too well how people have long memories on Ireland, I refer to the South, I don’t know anyone in the North. Many years ago on a visit to Ireland my Cousin’s Husband took us for a drive my late Husband had on his RAF tie, as Pat was driving past some area he stopped the car and told David to take his tie off otherwise there would be trouble, a tie? I have been in restaurants with my Sons in the South and as soon as they heard the accent you were made so uncomfortable, avoid Tralee. There are others who accepted what was done and moved on, my late Father’s eldest brother was 16 at the time of the troubles he worked in an undertakers the Black and Tans arrived one day threw a bomb into the place obviously my Father’s Brother died, my Father never had bitterness, he moved on I could not understand how he never hated the Black and Tans, but he taught me not to hate. I was once referred to as that “rich English bitch” I was neither Rich and only English by birth, all my blood is Irish, this came from a friend of my late Aunt – there are still memories and hated, but on the whole the Irish are great. We had comments made about the English to our face in Berlin, so it’s everywhere, that is people. If say your name is Mclaughlin in the north there would know that was Catholic, the same name with the “c” in the higher case Protestant, all so bloody stupid.
Morning Anna – you not talking to me today?
Afternoon Opher, of course hope you are ok. Well good news, at last, David told me last night he will buy my airline ticket but I have to p so “better start saving”.ay for the hotel and spending money, great isn’t it. Jonathan has gone out to do some posting and PO parcel sending for me asked him to get my application for passport, just had to phone to remind him, he will forget. Hope no probs about heart. It is going to happen fingers crossed, YES.
Sorry forgot to check what I typed, too excited hope it makes sense
Everything makes sense – you are going to San Francisco!Best to take your heart with you so that you can leave it in San Francisco.
I probably will do David said it was a “one way ticket”.
Send them postcards from the promised land. You won’t want to go back.
Anna, all joking aside, double check that ticket because they might not let you get in with just a one-way.
Or if you admit to knowing me and Andrew (particularly if you are carrying sedious, blasphemous and pornographic material – such as the book of ginny.
thinking about it….where’s my Jim’ll Fix It badge, my replica gun and my bag of cocaine? Whose got them, own up!
Andrew – you gave them to Anna – she’s already packed them!
Air Marshall material.
Do Air Marshalls have to make their own clothes?
that’s a relief…thought for a moment they’d fallen into the wrong hands…
She’ll have no trouble getting through customs in the USA.
Maybe it might be wise to deny I know you both, but to hell with not taking “Ginny” it’s what I hope will pass the time on that long flight (be nice if David paid for First Class, doubt that though)
That might work.
Andrew you mention that badge, my eldest Son when he was small used to ask his Father for that badge every time his Father would come back from the Lodge meeting – (you know the Grand Rank badge)
Anna, I’ve not got a clue about the Masons, except that whatever I’d heard or seen about them I didn’t like it. I once watched one of their ceremonies in 1980, at their very grandly decorated lodge in the basement of The Great Eastern Hotel in Liverpool Street. An older manager took me down and we hid and spied in on it all.
The most weird ritual and speech. I think they’re basket cases.
I think the Masons are one of those ‘Old Boys’ weird clubs that perpetuate the apartness of the establishment.
I don’t like it.
It all about Presbytery and open to all classes, rich or poor.
That’s what’s weird about it, there is no separation from the establishment as it’s all interlinked. It’s a sect that conducts business only for the good of it’s own membership.
Some very powerful people, too, but a member who is a baker can be Grand Master over a bank manager.
I know. It takes all sorts. But there are distinct groups for police, judges and solicitors.
I’ve seen the way it operates. The contracts that are given to ‘favoured’ people.
It stinks.
I find it creepy. I worry that justice is not there when people receive favours. Do crimes get swept under carpets? Lighter sentences handed down? People not arrested? I’m sure that happens.
I’d have to say that’s mistaken – there is no division – a man is a man, but devoutly Protestant, regardless of social position. There are lodges where the members just happen to be lots of legal people and police, but that’s actually more luck of location than any other reason. At that lodge I spied in 1980, I recognised several politicians and it was only later I realised they were from all the parties. So there’s no political divisions either.
People confuse Orange lodges with Masonic lodges. They are not the same thing at all.
I do know a bit about it, my mother was a bit of an expert on it’s workings, as her father – police – was a life long member and she being an only child, I imagine, would get told a lot she perhaps wouldn’t otherwise have got to hear. Something to do with parental/child trust. She was very big on that ethos.
Still, I didn’t fancy it.
But I’ve a friend who never had a father and he did his utmost to get to join as soon as he could. I think he felt the need to catch up on the company of men as mentors. It took him a few years to get it. When he planned to get married everything was organised for him. When he moved down south, everything, I mean everything, was organised for him. The buying a house, the removal company, the wiring checked, the gas checked, the roof checked, kitchen equipment delivered and installed, carpets, curtains etc, you name it, all done for them.
I can believe.
I still do not like it.
Andrew/Opher – my late husband David was a Freemason, his Lodge meetings were held in The Strand, it didn’t bother me, they are supposed to help each other, and I suppose they do. I think with my husband it was being elitist, my Sons have no interest in it not that they could afford it. They no doubt have a lot of power and use it in the establishment, too many are the establishment.
I don’t like elitist.
Neither do I and he did look down his nose at the
At the what?
There’s no excuse to look down your nose at people. That just reflects on yourself. I take peoiple as I find them. There’s good and bad in all walks of life.
Anna, it’s not about money, that’s the least of it. It’s about what you can bring to the table, what’s your worth as a man. Having a trade is very much encouraged, something useful and tangible.
But, you need to be invited, seconded and passed. They watch and monitor all they can find out about you before acceptance. Many don’t cut the grade.
Andrew yes you are right, my eldest Son Jonathan used to work for Boots in the Pharmacy he was approached by someone who asked if he was interested in becoming a mason, he heard Jonathan’s Father had been one, Jonathan does not believe in any God and was not interested in being a mason. I know when his Father was alive he said he would take Jonathan into his Lodge when he was 21 – God I can imagine the arguments there would have been.
One time a friend of David’s was what they call “blackballed” by every single person in the Lodge he wanted to join.
It’s not money; it’s an attitude. It’s snobbish, elitist and a network that is unsavoury. It favours its members and affords them rights and privileges. That’s not right. We need a level playing field.
I like equality. I don’t want privilege.
I think Jonathan had a lucky escape.
Opher, I think you slightly misunderstand the actual ethos. Nobody is forced to join – so it’s not a peer pressure issue.
It’s about maintaining the strengths that are predominant within a society. That being not having crime, not having anti-social wasters, not having kids starving, not having arsehole parents dumping their kids on the system whilst they get wrecked.
They encourage education, encourage trades to employ the next generation, encourage wholesome engagement within all social affairs.
They probably aspire to absolutely everything that you want to see in society. But, and it’s a big but, you must believe in God and you must be a Protestant Christian. There’s no quarter on anything less.
What’s more by the sheer nature of the organisations workings they actually deter people from making any untoward mistakes in life, ie. knocking money on the fly out the till at work, right the way to the politician taking a bung.
But naturally, in the grand scheme of things they will indeed be looking after their own if one sees himself up in front of the Magistrate – a fellow member. But that’s as far as it goes.
Allegedly.
Nobody is forced to join but the pressure and expectation is there. If you don’t you do not get on.
I was offered when I was a Senior teacher and I categorically turned them dow. I was offered again as a deputy and a Head. Nearly all the previous Heads had been. I am bloody sure that if I had accepted I would have been a Head a lot sooner. They had to grudgingly give it to me because of ability. I’ve seen clowns getting on.
In the police it is rife. If you want promotion you join.
Same in law and judges.
It’s elite. It is sinister and it is pervasive. I do not like having secret societies at the centre of power.
They may take a range but the ethos stinks.
I don’t know what happened to the above, but what I was going to say was he did look down his nose at the Irish connection too. David made another life for himself when he joined the RAF he left behind his family and became this other person – don’t know what I saw now in him.
I think the forces does that to a lot of people. Perhaps its the training. It takes away individuality. You can become brainwashed into being an unthinking part of the group. It’s meant to instil pride and comradeship. Don’t know about that.
Do you want to know the truth David was born on The Isle of Dogs I actually came from better, but I was just “a stupid girl”. He told me once the RAF gave him the chance to leave all the past behind and become what he did. He had a beautiful speaking voice, Jonathan does have that as for young David he does not give a damn about anyone (except his Brother and the dog and me). David could be a snob, maybe it was the gentleman bit I fell for, now I don’t know. By the way do you think I am joking about San Francisco, I am not it’s you who has given me all the encouragement.
Depends upon one’s point of view – individuality comes in many strengths and strains. So does further education and learning a trade.
I remember some guys from school that were going the right way about ending up in prison. The school steered them towards the forces and these guys grew up. I’d see them in town on their leave in the uniform, proud as punch. They were going to be engineers and bridge builders, learning to drive etc. They were no longer interested in kicking the shit out of me. Whereas the other wasters were in borstal.
I wouldn’t knock it because it works very well for some people.
Yes. I know. It gives people skills and some self-discipline. But for others it knocks them into a mold.
I know you’re not joking. I’m glad you’re coming out of your shell. You’re going to have a great time. You are flying in more ways than one.
“At what” was the fact I came from Irish stock, after all it is thought they are beneath (I better not say anymore).
Say what you like.
The Irish are a great race. Lots of great writers and intellectuals. They got a bit of a bad name because of the ‘navigators’. A lot of fairly uneducated Irish came over here to dig the roads, rail and canals. They gave the impression that the Irish were ignorant, hard drinking and ill educated. It was a skewed sample.
I’m part Irish and proud of it!
They are Celtic. The Irish, Welch and Scots are all Celts. The English got watered down with the infusion of Saxon blood, therefore, are no longer regarded as Celts.
My heart bleeds for them.
There is such as thing as hybrid vigour.
Reblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
Faith schools are indoctrination. They oppose integration.
I believe indoctrinating children with religion or politics is an abuse. It should be a crime. … who decides what that is though?
I agree Simon – it is an abuse. The religious schools, Sunday Schools and Madrassas should all be shut down.
I do not think it would be hard to come to a political wording on that. It would be hard to enforce in the home though – but not impossible – they’ve done it with physical violence, haven’t they?
I think it would be imp[ossible
Something to work towards maybe?