Home school mother brainwashes with religion

The kids say, this is just a phase mama's going through, what with the hairy legs, tie dyes, dreads, and Buddhist stuff.

Because look today, where mama dragged everyone again.


That's right. Peace Pagoda, Milton Keynes.

Well, kids, the line between abusing you and educating you just got blurred, so today I am torturing you with religion. And not just a little bit of religion, a lot. So next week read in the newspapers how Mama is a CRAZOID RELIGIOUS HOME EDUCATING ZEALOT.

And while I beat you, I will say This is for your own good, Squirrel, Tiger and Shark. You will thank me later.

Because today at the Peace Pagoda is the annual Multifaith and Multicultural Celebration. And right here are speeches from Muslim, Hindi, Jewish, Pagan, Atheist and Christian community leaders. Hey, they even get Bruce Kent up to the microphone. So let's kill several birds with one stone, metaphorically speaking, and you call this your annual assembly.

Well that's your home ed. Now what they do with religion in mainstream schools these days? I'm out of date there, so if anyone can tell me, please do.

Because my only contact with school religion is completely and overwhelmingly half-heartedly Christian with overtones of slightly mad.

Sometime after the Norman invasion I attended a primary school where one morning in assembly the headteacher broke the news that we grubby kneed, snotty nosed latchkey kids had sinned at the moment of our birth so that was it, kaput. Your parents may love you, but let's face it, you're doomed. The only way back to goodness, nice things, clean knees and everyone else loving you was by being good. Good meant doing exactly what you were told. Now stand up, close your eyes, put your hands together and we say the Lord's Prayer, and you will say it five times until you get it right. And that was a sort of education, but probably not the one they hoped for.

The next contact I had with religion was a grammar school, time warped into the eighteenth century. They did assembly and hymn singing. Probably about eighteen months spread over five years of pain. The time was wasted on Grit, who spent her assembly hours trying to work out Plan A) Run away to Brazil and Plan B) Starve herself to glorious perfection because she'd worked out she was just the Wrong Sort to be saved by Jesus.

And that was it. We had Christianity, and we had nothing else. Heck, I even worked in schools as a fully grown willing adult and they still had no religion I can recall. Maybe it was just too contentious.

So several times a year I do this non-coercive round up of the religions, beliefs, aspirations and interpretations in the expectation that one day, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will be free and choose for themselves, nothing, anything, something.


Including, should they wish, Flying Spaghetti Monster.