Every once and a while the
hymn singing in our school assembly got so bad one of the teachers took it upon
himself to march up and down the aisle shouting at us to ‘Sing!’. The truth was
only the second years, some sixth-formers and teachers sang the obligatory
hymn. The rest of the school – all 700 of them – just didn’t bother. A portion
of Scripture was read (I used to love doing that when it was my turn) and then
a short homily was shared by the head of R.E. The headmaster then gave the
notices and we all trudged out to registration. The only ones who were not
present at this daily routine were a handful of Jehovah’s Witnesses – there
were no Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists in our school at the time. In fact, in
north-west Anglesey in the late 1970s I’m not sure we even knew such religions
existed.
Sparking faith
Throughout my seven years at
secondary school that’s how every day began. In primary school we even finished
the day with the Apostle’s blessing. And it did me no harm. The thing is I’m
not sure it did me any good either. My faith (yes, I know, such as it is) was
not sparked in those periods but in Sunday School and in particular under the
instruction of one faithful teacher. Which is why I have some sympathy with an
e-petition currently on the Welsh Assembly’s website calling on the government
to repeal an act that requires collective worship in schools.
It claims that this law is ‘extremely
unpopular, with opinion polls showing teachers don’t want it, parents don’t
want it, and children don’t want it’, which, let’s be honest is probably true.
The petitioner wants to replace this act of worship with an ‘inclusive’
assembly for both the religious and non-religious pupils.
Humanist stance
As any regular reader of
this blog would no doubt be able to guess, I am tempted to sign. The one thing
that puts me off is the fact that – according to my research – the petitioner
is an officer of the British Humanist Association based in London and in these
days of devolved government I rather think that we should be allowed to get on
with running our country without any outside interference.
After all here in Wales
we’ve been doing quite well at winding down the Christian faith ever since
1906.
