As I might have mentioned before, I am retraining to become a Primary School teacher. I am very lucky in having the support of a good local Primary School with a fantastic approach to teaching and a very competent school team. I am in at the deep end, teaching one lesson a week (with no prior training) and learning what teaching entails.
I am still a long way off being a teacher, but its been a blast so far.
Halloween?
Recent events brought the school’s religious status into the forefront of my mind. It was Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, The Night Before All Saints Day… however you like to take it. While All Saints Day has some years under the belt, Halloween is a more recent construction, only just under 500 years old. I won’t go any more into this, such as the subversion of pagan festivals, because that should be left to the Pagan post, when it hits our screens.
The school I am at allows no mention or encouragement of Halloween. Now at the risk of sounding a bit of a killjoy (and those who know me know that I am), this is something I heartily approve of.
Halloween has become a mess, a mass commercialised excuse for that good old Capitalist machine to grind out a few more pennies from us. While many cultures throw a bit of a party on Halloween for religious reasons, our good cousins the Americans have truly taken this festival to incredible commercial levels. This is something I dislike and the growing financial and cultural expectation to take part is discomforting. Its still a way off Christmas though. Baah Humbug.
Why does our school ignore it?
Anyway I asked why Halloween was something not to be mentioned. The answer was that the Diocese and local Vicar did not like it, did not recognise any religious significance in it, felt it was contrary to the promotion of the image of the religion in the area. And the school supported that view 100%. Nothing else, no previous issues, worries about commercialising the children, or playground conflicts. I found that to be a little interesting.
The second incident was during a discussion on class management and behaviour policy. We have three real (adult) students at the school, and me, all trying to learn a little. At the core of any school system are the methods of social control used to to encourage learning and reduce disruption. Or to let the teachers do their jobs and not get fired. Or… I could go on. Anyway, we were examining the school’s behaviour policy as outlined by the governing board.
Point 1 was all about Christian ethos, values and expected behaviours. Once again the underlining of the religious nature of the school. First and foremost.
What intrigued me is the acceptance of this particular approach. While the school is as warm and friendly as you can get, it has a very subtle undertone that constantly reinforces its Christian atmosphere. It’s the local school, so not going there involves a proper journey, not just a walk around the corner, like where I live. So as a parent who might have some issues with getting your child outside of the village to another school, you have no choice to send your child to an environment which is constantly, quietly, secretly at times, promoting a one religion point of view on how a society should be. A hidden curriculum.
Now as an obstinate, stubborn and argumentative adult I can ignore all that, but what about your child?
To be honest, I think the nature of Christian-based Primary schools in Britain (and their dominance in British village life) has more to do with history than it does with any kind of conspiracy to brain-wash children.
In short, Christians set up the first schools, initially to teach young children the three R’s (a laughable acronym) and when, in 1944, the government decided to create free education for all children they set up a deal with the Church-owned schools to pay for them but allow each school to retain its Christian governorship.
As time has passed by, this situation has never been reformed. In short, the State is too afraid to lose all the Christian schools and replace them with secular ones. This is a uniquely Primary problem, as the Secondary Schools are (for the most part) secular.
That Vicar is probably oblivious to the history… I know I was until I studied the Education Act 1944.
As parent with two young children in the primary school system I considered this rather interesting. In my recent experience, their previous and current primary schools have been completely secular, as was the very small village primary school I attended when I was their age.
So the idea of a state primary school so overtly guided by a regilious theme seems quite odd, especially in this day and age. Halloween, love it or hate it, is part of our western culture and should be part of school life. If nothing else, surely schools should reflect the world around them?
Does the church still dominate village life so much? I see no evidence of this where I have lived in the south of England (and now in Sweden).
Thanks for the replies chaps.
@UR – I need to find the reference to the evidence that some church primary schools were set up to counter a lack of serious religious commitment amongst the wroking classes. Despite regular church attendance there was, apparently, still evidence of what was called “pagan practices” but was probably tradition, habit and old wives tales combined. Anyway, its a fun read and adds an extra dimension to the early history of our school system.
@ Neathleanan – I hope you are enjoying forn places! This is actually more of a post towards the idea that in schools there are being messages broadcasted to a children almost continuously which you will not have agreed to, or signed up to, as a parent. Now don’t panic, because schools aren’t sending out little subliminal messages persuading our kids to by certain cereals! For the vast majority of schools, and especially state schools, the pupils are being lead in a certain direction with behaviour, performance, what “good” looks like – in essence what is and what isn’t acceptable. Now some of these messages are entirely necessary, eg hitting people is not acceptable, pushing in line is not the done thing and keeping quiet when people are talking. Others are not. In this case the question isn’t whether the overtly christian message is right or wrong, but whether parents are aware of it and whether they want their children exposed to it regardless of its values.
For an example. My son’s reception year teacher told him that the sun was made of angel’s breath. She is a born again christian and such “answers” were commonplace. Despite some complaints the teacher was not asked to change her approach and the unofficial position was that it was a CofE school and they were only recption kids, so what was the harm.
The harm was several weeks persuading my son it wasn’t so. Now what would have happened if it was about something that might not have been covered again at that school?
This isn’t a slagging off of religious primary schools, just a reflection and a question. We trust schools to teach our children, but do we actually know what they are learning and whether we agree with it?
Hi FH, nice article. Just a couple of thoughts.
The festival of All Saints/All Souls actually goes back to the 9th Century (835 AD, I believe, was when it was instituted), so whilst the Christian event is older than you may have realised, it is, nevertheless, true that it is, as you suggested, a subversion of a previously existing pagan festival. It was, unfortunately, a common practice of ‘Christianizing’ the population by ‘baptising’ their practices and giving them new meaning. That this led to synchratistic practices is undoubted, and the practice is one which I, personally, wish had never been allowed. That the ‘everyday’ or ‘folk’ religion which exists amongst the average household in this land remains an amalgam of half-understood Christian belief, and pre-Christian practices simply reflects the failure of such an endeavour (from my perspective).
I would also like to say that it is unfair to suggest that a school which is openly a Christian-based school (as opposed to one that simply follows the Government guidelines on ‘Broadly Christian’) is being subversive or disingenuous. I have been a HoD in a Church Secondary School, and am currently a Givernor in a Church Primary School. So I have a little understanding here. Any school which has Church affiliation (especially Anglican) has to be clear in this, and parents need to be more aware of what they are signing-up to. Soime Church schools are simply that in name only, but others aren’t. likewise, in a school designated as C of E, the OFSTED guidelines mean that they are not inspected by OFSTED, but under what used to be called Section 21 – i.e. an educationalist appointed by the Diocese which the school is under goes in and inspects both the RE curriculum and assembly provision. As I have experienced both OFSTED and Section 21 in my time, I can honestly say that there is little difference between them, except that one is much more concerned with the ‘Church’ flavoiur of the school than the other. It is unfortunate that people’s choices are restricted if their only local primary is C of E, but, unfortunately, a large number of parents do seem to think that this is a good thing – rightly or wrongly.
However, any school which fails in its hidden curriculum of SMSC will also be taken to task by OFSTED for failure to be properly diverse and respectful of the varieties of belief within its pupil population.
With the specific case of Halloween, I think it is fair to say that the issue isn’t so much the event itself, but why people are doing it, for some it is just a piece of ‘fluff’ but for others, it isn’t. If you’ll forgive me for being too personal in expression, i can understand not wnating to glorify evil in this way.
Out of time, gotta run, sorry it’s much more brief than I intended. thanks again for writing this.