{"id":2684,"date":"2024-07-25T10:10:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/?p=2684"},"modified":"2024-07-25T10:10:21","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:10:21","slug":"thoughts-on-the-michaela-prayer-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/?p=2684","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on the Michaela Prayer Row"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Opinion Piece. Docklands and East London Advertiser 15.2.24. (Also published in Romford Recorder, Barking and Dagenham Post)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A row over prayers at a West London school has hit the headlines. But there\u2019s a bigger picture that should be grabbing our attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The row concerns Britain\u2019s so-called \u2018strictest headteacher\u2019, Katharine Birbalsingh, taken to court over a ban on Muslim students praying during lunchtime. Many schools and workplaces have quite rightly reached a reasonable compromise, enabling Muslims to pray in a way that doesn\u2019t unduly intrude on others. The case should cast light on why private prayer was not accommodated at this school, and provide useful guidance. Whatever the reason, nothing justifies the reported harassment and violent threats against school staff by religious bullies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the West London dispute is a storm in a teacup compared to the scale of religious division and unfairness elsewhere in our education system. This goes back to the 19th<\/sup> century when the Christian establishment won the argument on religion being embedded in the first state schools. We still have an archaic law, completely unsuited to today\u2019s Britain, requiring every state school to hold a daily act of Christian worship. Some schools don\u2019t comply. But many who do sideline and discriminate against children of different or no faith. I still remember being left out of assemblies as a child and the feeling of being \u2018othered.\u2019 Assemblies are an important part of every school day, and should be inclusive of all children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m often invited by enlightened local schools to speak about humanism, not to promote my beliefs, but to help children understand the views of people like me who are not religious and who now form around half the population. Pupils usually find these sessions valuable and thought-provoking, whatever their belief. But in many schools Religious Education remains narrow, faith-based, and dominated by Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State-funded faith schools, dividing children based on their parents\u2019 religion, have proliferated. And the scourge of illegal schools with an exceptionally narrow religious agenda has still not been addressed, despite Government promises. There are several in East London. \u00a0 A modern education should include learning about all beliefs, and freedom of belief and expression should be respected, provided it causes no harm to others.\u00a0 But freedom and respect also means empowering children to work out for themselves what to believe, free from indoctrination or having other\u2019s beliefs imposed on them. ENDS<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paul Kaufman, Chairperson East London Humanists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A row over prayers at a West London school has hit the headlines. But there\u2019s a bigger picture that should be grabbing our attention. The row concerns Britain\u2019s so-called \u2018strictest headteacher\u2019, Katharine Birbalsingh, taken to court over a ban on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9c4oP-Hi","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2686,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions\/2686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eastlondon.humanist.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}