Keeping God out of the schools

Everybody in for a bit of controversy for a Friday night? How about Christian prayers in secular schools? You think it does not exist. Oh yes it does, in the UK at least. I have witnessed it first hand. I worked in a school, a school that labeled itself secular, that was legally and officially considered secular. Yet they had Christian prayers in assemblies. Which made me mutter Jesus Christ the first time I've witnessed it. And every time after that. Of course, I consider it wrong. This is a form of proselytism, this is religious propaganda, it is a betrayal of the mission of a public, secular school, which should have no religious bias whatsoever... and it is perfectly legal. Because England is not a secular country, not by law, it is, in the incestuous way the Church of England and the public institutions go to bed together, absolutely backward. But now the school governors want to abolish the rule on Christian assemblies. It would be about time. In any circumstances, the prayers in schools would be bad enough, in a secular and pluralist society, they are not only "meaningless" as the governors said, they are also obscurantist and cowardly, trying to give a particular faith a legitimacy and a relevance it does not have.

So yes, I was very happy to read the news. And when I heard about this petition, I gladly signed it. Even though I am not into petitions usually, whatever the cause. I also invited people to sign it on Facebook, and I am doing it here tonight. Because as long as there are Christian school assemblies, there are no secular schools in Britain, plain and simple. And I have witnessed them with my own eyes. And they were just as bad and sick as the old Catholic classes I had when I was growing up in Québec. They poison and atrophy the minds and have pupils look at their feet as if they'd find God there. So they need to end.