Atheist Ireland Forum

My wife and I have just had an apparent win with our local school.

Our eldest has just started school and we we told, by both the principal and teacher, that the first year religious education was mainly about the animals, seasons, etc and very little religion. We were invited to take home the Alive-O to have a look at the syllabus.

To our horror we saw what they considered 'very little religion'. We wrote a letter to the board of management and a week latter our child is now taken out of class during the 30 minutes of direct indoctrination and supervised by the special needs teacher. We were assured that the special needs teacher was full time and the only time we would need to take our son out of school is if the special needs teacher was sick, etc.

We will be monitoring the situation.

Here is the letter we used, based on the template letter found on the teachdontpreach.ie website. Hope it helps:

To the Board of Management of <School Name>
After meetings with the principal, <Principal Name>, and reviewing the Alive-O curriculum, we have concluded that the Alive-O program is contrary to our family values and conscience.

We respect the school's Catholic ethos and acknowledge that the Catholic faith is integrated throughout the curriculum. However, to keep <Child's Name> in the Alive-O class would be disingenuous and hypocritical on our behalf, values that are against our family ethos.

We wish to exercise our Constitutional Right under Article 44.2.4 to opt our child out of Religious education class.
Section 30 – 2 (e) of the Education Act 1998 reads:
“Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), the Minister – shall not require any student to attend instruction in any subject which is contrary to the conscience of the parent of the student or, in the case of a student who has reached the age of 18 years, the student.”

To ensure all involved are respected, we need to work together, with the Board of Management, to address this section of <Child's Name>'s schooling. From our understanding of the situation, we believe that perhaps the best course of action available is to remove <Child's Name> from the classroom. This ensures that <Child's Name> is not indoctrinated with religious instruction during this lesson and reduces the appearance of division within the classroom.

However, timing and supervision of this period away from class may need to be resolved, if the school can not provide supervision. In a recent report from the Irish Human Rights Commission, “Religion and Education: A Human Rights Perspective”, 24 May, 2011, it recommends the following:
“Where diverse provision of education does not exist in a school’s catchment area, consideration should be given to move formal religion classes to the start or end of the school day. While not ideal in terms of separating children, this might provide greater accommodation to parents of minority faith or non faith children seeking exemption. If sufficient numbers of students sought the exemption, provision could be made for a parallel class in ethics and philosophy, or other minority religions as demand dictates at the same time.”

We understand that it is within the remit of the school's patron and board of management to ensure that <Child's Name>'s human rights are respected by the school's ethos.

Feel free to contact us with regards any of the above.
Please confirm this in writing and please do not discuss this matter with my child.
Yours sincerely,

I am delighted to hear this and well done. I did notice this year that we are not getting so many complaints and I have put it down to the template letter on Teach, don't preach.

...I'm not surprised that your reaction to such a program was "horror". Animals, seasons, etc have no place in religious education at all. I can only imagine what sort of things they're telling kids. I'd almost rather they sit in class and read the Bible than be given a religious explanation for the world.

Anyway, hope all goes well and no problems arise

It was my 'foreign national' ignorance. When two education professionals tells you one thing and you find out that both were liberal with the reality, you really want to question the true 'ethos' of the school.

I am really happy they provide the supervision!! And welcome to the forum Puck!

Thanks for the welcome

Oh Dear. Oh Dear. Oh Dear.
Just had my daughter kneel on the living room floor and put her hands together and start..."Mother Mary I love you", and embark on a big long prayer... Asked her about it and she said teacher showed them how to say it. And all after me having a chat with the teacher and head-master who know my concerns... dear me.

Same happend to me. It is a endless battle. They are just very arrogant when it comes to religion; "It won't do any harm so what is your problem" and "Just put up with it" I heard a lot.

You can choose to try and do it the friendly way (which sometimes works) but if you want to take further steps I can help you in the right direction. I started a procedure at the ombudsman for children. It is easy to do.

Let us know how you get on.

I ended up removing my child from school, but many here have not such problems and can do it with mutal agreement. I was not so lucky

Time for the battle armour. Got a lecture last night from the wife about it too. Seemingly I am the problem. The alternative is for me to bring her to the church I went to as a kid (mixed marriage). Because I dont then I cant complain about her being brainwashed at 4 years of age.

If yourself and herself are not singing from the same hymn-sheet (metaphorically, of course), you are between a rock and a hard place.

For the sake of harmony, you may have to resort to allowing the other half carry on with the ceremonial and just keep telling your child that "Daddy doesn't believe that." By the teenage years, she'll see your point of view, hopefully.

This is what non-Catholics have had to do for generations in Ireland.

No suprise, they will say they'll accomondate your child, which really means allow her to observe and take part in passive indoctrination. I think the church approach will be futile, verbally tell you what you want to hear and continue as normal.

(aside note: before someone tells you these are Catholic schools... back before the Vatican took control of our schools, when Ireland was under British control, there was no embedded faith formation in the schools, in the past Ireland had real secular education, each religious group did have a prayer-time or none, -source Dialogue Ireland)

I would suggest doing what Puck has done (above) send a letter like the one on the teachdontpreach.ie site to the school's board of management, also contact your local politician explain your problem qoute your rights that are being ignored. Having things in writing is very important as proof of contact that you tried to resolve the problem and agreements made.

As far as I have read the ombudsman will seek proof that you tried everything to resolve the issue before going to them.

If the school has a special-needs teacher, then there's no reason the board couldn't put in place the same solution as in Puck's case, at least you'll be going to them with a solution, and hopefully your child can get back to learning real education.

Spot on zerogodist. The worrying thing is she had about 4 verses off by heart, and went into this trancelike state rattling off this rubbish. What a waste of her time in school and her intelligence.
When I had a chat with the teacher and pricipal they were very affable and kept saying that they treat every child the same. Silly me, I thought they meant something completely different. What they meant was... they treat them ALL like Catholics. Its going to be tricky one and I'll have to balnce my daughter's concerns with my own outrage. The problem is there is going to be a clash between what I'm telling her and the fairytales they're brainwashing her with. This will be an inevitable clash in ideologies and she will be stuck in the middle.

@ Feardorcha. That may well be an option but this is two months into her school life and I can already feel the red mist descending. Seriously considering the option of taking her out and putting her into educate together, although it's a 40 min drive away and means taking her away from all her friends. But maybe that move now might prevent unpleasantness down the road... cheers for all the advice.

Zero is right, the ombudsman looks for proof. Equality Authority is an other avenue you can try, they have a three months timelimit though. However I would first try and resolve it with letters. I won my case because I recorded everything. I even made notes from meeting and sent them to the Principal.

Even though my son is removed from the Alive-O class, he still learns prayers and the sign of the cross.

It's not perfect, but I'll have to live with it.

Normaly there is a school policy that he does not have to participate in prayers. You could then insist the teacher tells him he doesn't have to.

That is what I did.