They were doing the sign of the cross
Meanwhile, it’s perfectly all right to make little kids feel excluded and weird because they’re not from godbothering families.
Valentine Doyle (6) sits at the back of her class for 30 minutes every day and “draws”, while her classmates are taught religion.
“She feels left out, different, excluded,” says her father, Devin. “She says she wants to ‘do the God thing’ now because the other kids are doing it. They were doing the sign of the cross and some of them told her she should do it too. So she wants to.”
The parents had been living in France, where the state schools don’t teach religion.
“Vallie went to school in France. There you just go to the local school. It’s completely secular. If parents want their children to do religious education, they go to Sunday school or private schools. We knew there would be an issue here, so we put Vallie’s name down for a lot of Educate Together schools, but she didn’t get in. They were all full.”
They found her a place in a National school, one with the charming and inclusive name Christ the King National School.
They were nice to her there, they tried to make her feel included, but the fact remains…
…opting out of religious instruction means sitting at the back of the class for 30 minutes each day. “She draws. She sits on her own and she doesn’t like it. She feels excluded and different.
“She’s a curious kid and asks about religion. We’d like her to be able to opt in and learn about all religions. We have told her religion is a thing people use to explain about love with stories, but that we think there are better stories to understand love.”
But the teaching of religion there isn’t comparative, as the name probably suggests. It’s brand-name religion. It is, in short, Catholic.
So Vallie sits in the back and feels like a weirdo.
I was wondering what country it was: where on earth are the state schools religious?
…oh, Ireland.
It would be a culture shock, after France.
learie, I went through the same thing, but it was in Oklahoma, and it was southern Baptist instead of Catholic. Mandatory prayer, bible verses over the intercom, and requirement to say a prayer yourself for a week – you, the lofty fifth-grader, would have to lead the entire class in a prayer you composed. When my week came, I nervously led my prayer, being naturally shy. The teacher called me out on it, because I “didn’t do it right”. My family, you see, was not Baptist. We were Disciples of Christ. Both Protestants, both basically the same belief system, but something didn’t work for her, and there was only one proper religion, so I must redo the prayer around her specifications. I had no idea at the tender age of ten that the Supreme Court had declared you couldn’t make kids pray in school, and that teachers could not lead classes in prayer (and lets not even mention the intercom bible verses!). I suspect this is still going on; I know it is in parts of Oklahoma, and I suspect it is in at least the elementary schools. The entire town is Christian; they were horrified in the 90s when a Jewish family sued them over the Christian cross on the city seal – and won! How awful! My father still hasn’t gotten over it twenty years later.
Ugh. Poor kid.
For me the feeling left out wouldn’t have been the problem. I’d be happy to read and draw on my own but I never quite comprehended “fitting in” as important. It’s the being *criticized* for not fitting in that would have bothered me– it’s very intimidating when other children ask personal questions and then want to tell you your answers aren’t right. But I do know that fitting in is important for most kids and yet, if she’s allowed to join as a kind of make-believe, her peers may take it even worse later when she’s sick of it.
I would never allow my child to sit in that class or to attend that school. I’m sure there are many schools in Ireland that are completely secular. What were the parents thinking when they enrolled their child in a school called ‘Christ the King’? It’s more than obvious the school has a clear religious vocation.
John,
Irish “National” schools are the state school. They’re all named after Catholic saints or similar and (possibly until recently?) most of the school premises are owned by the church (and are mostly built to the same general plan which makes them very recognisable). There are very few non-state primary schools and those are overwhelmingly of a different religious flavour rather than secular, and with limited places, and usually private/fee-paying.
This. Very much. When we moved to Oklahoma, the first question anyone would ask the new kid – where do you go to church? – and then tell them why that was the wrong church. This continued all through high school. It can be very intimidating. And to someone coming from a culture where no one ever asked anyone where they went to church, it can be confusing, as well. Why does it matter? Why do you care? And is there really THAT MUCH difference between Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist anyway? I think that might be worse than being called out by the teacher.
@Banichi
I wasn’t aware of that. So most of Ireland’s schools are still Catholic?
John – oh yes, they very much are. It’s increasingly an issue in Ireland, whose population is rapidly becoming more secular. I’ve blogged about it before so I didn’t include the bit of the article that spelled that out.
It is strange that the Church retains its stranglehold on Irish schools, when it is losing ground on just about every other front. Says something about priorities…
John: if the “lose” the current generation of children they’re dead in the water and they know it. Their top priority is to keep their power and the money rolling in and they’ll fight tooth and nail to do it.
Gotta focus on keeping the kids in awe of the priests, otherwise, where would they get their victims?
I know stories of lone Jewish kids in Christian schools (or state schools where the state religion was Christian) – my grandmother in Romania, the son of an acquaintance in Italy – where sitting out of the religion class was obvious because the kids were raised with the knowledge that their family is different and that’s how it should be.
(Fun story about the boy in Italy – one day the priest asked him why he wasn’t drawing as usual. The boy answered that he couldn’t, because his mother is using the pens to make signs for the demonstration for abortion rights. Last time the priest talked to him.)