On the Wrong Track

This week I attended a conference at the Yorkshire Rail Academy next door to the National Railway Museum in York. The conference was put on by NASACRE (the National Association of Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education). I was involved because I was recently invited on to theEast Riding of Yorkshire Council SACRE as a co-opted Humanist member. I had to be co-opted because a rule made by the last Conservative government prevents Humanists from sitting on SACREs with full voting rights. Religious Education is not part of the National Curriculum and the syllabus is decided locally by the SACRE. The current syllabus for the ERYC schools does not contain the words “atheist” or “humanist” (I did a word search). Is this right when about 17% of the local population have Humanist type beliefs and do not believe in the doctrines of the major religions. When children in our schools are presented with a text book scenario with a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Bahai, etc, should there not also be a Mrs Smith, the Humanist who doesn’t believe in God? Should there not be a look at an assessment of the sacred and profane from the perspective of someone who has no sacred text or icons? Recent human rights legislation outlaws discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, or the lack of belief. A story in the news this week tells of how a head teacher in Sheffield has resigned after her attempts to move away from separate Muslim and Christian school assemblies, both attempts at “collective worship”, towards “inclusive assemblies” for all the students together were resisted by religious school governors. As the trains thundered past the conference facilities, shaking the foundations, I could only contemplate what the future holds for multifaith and multicultural Britain if we allow our education policies to be dictated by the thinking of Lord Reith’s generation. Some think that not exposing children to an experience of religious worship deprives them of an important opportunity. The world has changed and our laws about “collective worship” in state schools which are blatantly flouted by 70% of head teachers, should be dragged kicking and screaming in to the 21st century in the interests of community cohesion if nothing else.

Photo by ChrisO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Railway_signals.jpg