Dearly beloved, let us
Mr Black Peter, the Prince of Wales, has opened a right old can of worms with his suggestion that the compulsory hum-a-long hour of "collective worship" in schools – usually interpreted as mandatory Church of England waffles for breakfast – should be updated to something more multi-cultural and multi-faith.
As I am a MILITANT ATHEIST BABY ELEPHANT you can hardly be surprised that my immediate sympathies lie with the secularists who say: "why should we have a compulsory act of faith AT ALL?"
Given that the whole point of schools is to crack open young people's brains and pour knowledge in, this makes them especially impressionable and open to receiving ideas as "TRUE" because they are told so by an authority figure. Ideas that we are told when we are young are often very difficult to unlearn. It is not for nothing that the JESUITS used to say "give us the child until he is six and we will give you the man". But if religion is TRULY about faith and commitment, then it should not need to BRAINWASH people from a young age – it should be open to letting people make their own minds up.
But then again, being forced to attend a STULTIFYINGLY DULL religious practice every morning in school is surely one of the surest ways of ensuring that a generation of children have grown up disdainful of organised religion. Getting your education from your religion is often a short route to ignorance and a closed mind, but getting a religious education from religious education LESSONS is DEFINITELY the best way to proof your mind against any interest in, well, a religious education.
In the same way, schools should be barred from teaching the Bard and concentrate on classes in "Casualty" and "Coronation Street". This should soon ensure that this television mush is soon as loathed as Shakespeare is now, and we should get the most literate and erudite children in the world.
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