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22 responses to “George Monbiot » The Corporate Takeover of Childhood”
I have started to wonder if we shouldn’t start referring to the next general election as ‘The Last General Election’.
There’s another article on that site on just that theme.
Scary stuff. Wondering whether I should print it out (and laminate it, of course!) and show it to anyone who asks why my kids don’t go to school ….
Rofl Alison…although it is terrifying, isn’t it?
Try replacing the word “corporate” in that article with “church”.
I would rather children are exposed to Coke-Cola adverts at school, than the unquestioning, uncritical, everyone believes this, it must be true approach to christianity that is legally required in our schools.
At least they can drink Pepsi outside of school, or bottled water. Its only a drink. If you are taught that (whether you believe it nor not) you have to say prayers and sing hymns to a protestant god, how will you ever know how to question it?
I have issues with corporations funding schools but I think religion is a far more incipid and dangerous problem.
Children *can* opt out of school’s daily worship, they wouldn’t have the option to opt-out of a Nestle-sponsored home economics session in the same way. I’m an aetheist by the way! I left school 16 years ago and was never exposed to christianity in the way you described, we studied christianity along with islam etc etc on a fairly equal footing.
I think you might be in the states? Am i right? That sounds much more the approach to Religion they have there than our “somewhat British” approach.
I don’t much like the notion of kids being exposed to advertising in schools but given i allow my children to watch nick jr i probably can’t talk. My kids have seriously suggested Ocean Finance as a way of enabling a trip to toys r us!
Liberta isn’t in the states.
I think that we do consider ourselves to be terribly low key about religion, but at the same time, it does surround our children in schools. Not that many senior schools comply with the regulations regarding daily gatherings for worship – few of them have the room for it!
I was brought up a Christian, with school and sunday school. I somehow drifted away at university, and I’d say that I really don’t know what is out there now. I don’t think I’m atheist as such, although I’m fairly sure I don’t believe in the notion of a god in our image iyswim.
The UK is actually completely odd in terms of making religion compulsory in schools, in the USA it is illegal to introduce religion into state schools.
Following adverse comment in the national press this Curriculum information was removed from the school’s web site. As I would understand it religion is introduced into schools in the US in just this kind of way.
The relationship between religion and government in the United States is governed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which both prevents the government from establishing religion and protects privately initiated religious expression and activities from government interference and discrimination. [ 1 ] The First Amendment thus establishes certain limits on the conduct of public school officials as it relates to religious activity, including prayer.
The legal rules that govern the issue of constitutionally protected prayer in the public schools are similar to those that govern religious expression generally. Thus, in discussing the operation of Section 9524 of the ESEA, this guidance sometimes speaks in terms of “religious expression.” There are a variety of issues relating to religion in the public schools, however, that this guidance is not intended to address.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment requires public school officials to be neutral in their treatment of religion, showing neither favoritism toward nor hostility against religious expression such as prayer. [ 2 ] Accordingly, the First Amendment forbids religious activity that is sponsored by the government but protects religious activity that is initiated by private individuals, and the line between government-sponsored and privately initiated religious expression is vital to a proper understanding of the First Amendment’s scope. As the Court has explained in several cases, “there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.” [ 3 ]
Lol – i’m completely confused then. I do think though that they have a real problem with having things like evolution in science courses and in a way that sort of thing is more actively “for” Christianity than against isn’t it?
rofl laughing at ocean finance Merry! my two know all the jingles in the Nick jnr ad breaks too, which is concerning but probably a fact of life, if we listened to commercial radio the same would happen, and by the time he was 3 he knew the golden arches sign for Mcdonalds. millions is spent on marketing and advertising to virtually guarantee it reaches its target market. with all the snappy slogans you see outside churches on posters there is obviously a marketing budget (or is it divine inspiration that comes to the vicar in prayer so he gets that sign made up to display!) for the church too. one of the (many and varied) reasons my two will be HEd is that I am uncomfortable not with religion itself, or them having knowledge of it, but to ensure that it is something they come into contact with as a concept, idea or belief held by some people as opposed to the ‘one true way’. the same goes for ads – they know that they are put on tv by people trying to sell them stuff, not necessarily telling the truth – does anyone really believe that X is probably the best lager in the world as a result of their ad campaign?
I must have been ‘lucky’ with my schools because in neither junior or secondary school was religion presented in a ‘one true way’. The only placed that happened was in ……errrrr church. Surely it is impossible in a school environment for a teacher to talk about religion in a non-partisan way, iyswim. I can safely say that religious education or otherwise had no bearing on my decision to home-educate, I would have happily sent them to a CofE school.
The evoloution argument is sort of consistent. Creationists would argue that evoloution is based on faith (in science) much as the evoloutionists would argue creationsim is based on faith (in a god). As the 1st amendment precludes religion in schools it would appear that teaching neither is the thing to do and is probably what happens a lot. Personally I think both should be touched on and kids given some credit to pick for themselve 😉
extra o o o o o how lovely…
Giggle – but consistantly.. which is impressive for you.
Yes- i think i would prefer to give my kids the option to decide. To be fair i try to do that with all sorts, including adverts. When they say “can we buy X breakfast cereal because the tv says its good for us” i say “they are telling you that to make you buy it, it might not be true in quite the way you think.”
I think one of my great problems i have with religion is that my (really very) chrisitan junior school was programmed to treat religion from the Bible as fact, and one of the things i have realized lately is there just came a point where i felt i had been lied too, and that rather put me off the whole thing.
i went to a ‘church’ school as a secondary school. i feel it was a bit behind the times anyway – all girls, with a very staid uniform, we had to wear a school beret when we went out on school trips, that sort of thing (which doubly offended me as it was bright red and clashed horribly with my ginger hair!) but there was a sort of ‘herd religion’ thing going on. every morning assembly was quite religion based and we recited the lords prayer (heads bowed, hands clasped – i remember singing the words to never gonna give you up by Rick Astley in my head every morning throughout so I wouldn’t automatically recite it along with everyone!), lots of activity with the church we were ‘attached’ to including at least one visit to the church a term for some sort of sermon. It wasn’t exactly rammed down our throats but it was there, even in infant school we sang a hymn every morning in assembly and did harvest festival, nativity play, carol concert etc – all of which presented to a five or six year old can only be interpreted as ‘fact’ and although very cute would not be what I wanted my child to be led to believe in without all the other possibilities offered aswell and it stated to be an opinion or a belief held by some. DS’s idea of god etc is that some people believe in god and jesus and worship at a church, some belief in allah and go to a mosque etc, in much the same way as he knows that mummy drinks tea and daddy drinks coffee, he likes white bread and his sister likes brown – kind of aware of all options as possibilities but able to try them out and decide what it is he wants. I hope that our family stance of not believing in anything allows them the most freedom and would like to take them to see various celebrations in places of worship so they can see what goes on and are not ‘missing out’.
But … don’t school children’s home lives give them an idea of balance? Don’t they (or you two who have mentioned it!) notice that their parents don’t go to church or anything?
I have always been very aware of the fact that my father is an atheist, and my mum is a – oh, devout makes her sound like some kind of nun, but ykwim! – Christian, and I don’t think the daily hymns and prayers, carol services or whatever at school had much, if any, effect on me. Maybe because there is this major difference between them, we got used to it being talked about {shrug}.
i guess there was a balance although a fairly extreme one! my parents both claim to be non-believers – they don’t really do deep thoughts on any subject, well not infront of other people anyway! so they got married in church, me and my brother were both christened – they have given me grief for not getting our children christened (as its traditional as opposed to anything religious which is very odd to me, not to mention hypocritical!)so religion was just never mentioned at all at home, but then neither was anything educational – so i could have ended up thinking all my spiritual and academic guidance just came from school and still believed that in the same way the maths taught was correct the religious stuff was too – I didn’t clearly, but it would have been possible…
Interesting discussions re religion. Looks like I had similar experience to some, quite different from others. I went to a standard run of the mill private girls school where you were not allowed out of prayers unless you could demonstrate another religion; agnostisism or atheisim didnt count – I tried!
Thats one thing I hated, but I understand that it might not be the case for people in the state system or in more modern times. It is still a legal requirement to have a religious class though, isn’t it?
My beef with these was due to the O level we took at the end – one subject area – the gospels of Jesus. And you were not expected to critique them or consider them from any perspective other than they were for real.
Does any one know if the standard religious exam (dont know what they are called now) is any broader? Or are there RK exam (Christian), RK exam (Muslim), RK exam (Hindu) etc?
My cousin and best friend are RE teachers in senior schools. Both of them do predominently other religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddism with the “Christian” side of it mainly demonstrated via an ethics module i believe.
Even when i did GCSE, in a private girls school with the same assembly routine as most of us have described, we did a GCSE that was non-obligatory (in fact only 13 out of 73 took it) and was half Gospels and half “Christian Perspectives” which was mainly an ethical look at marriage, abortion etc from a Christian viewpoint. But that was probably fair enough given both teachers were Christians and the school had at most maybe 8 asian girls in it and one or two Jews (one of whom was in the RE GCSE class!)
Oddly neither of my friends who teach RE are Christians and one works in a mainly Jewish/Muslim school in Leeds.
my Dad is an agnostic, my mum is nominally C of E, we weren’t taken to church and school provided the full religious works; even Xmas and Easter were of no more value that pressies and chocolate.
TBH, i think i found that more confusing than balancing really. It certainly didn’t help, more made me feel rather out of kilter with more devout friends.