mistermack wrote:
Lawsuit alleges: 7-year-old quizzed on religion, ordered to sit alone at lunch for telling classmates he didn’t believe in God
How backwards is the US ?
I doubt if this would have happened 100 years ago in the UK.
It's more like Afghanistan, really.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/vol ... ve-in-god/
Backwards? Not very. That's an aberration.
I might point to your official religion, and the fact that your head of State is also the head of the Church of England, as a rather backwards concept, one which was rejected by the United States in the 1700s. Would the US be even more backwards if we were to adopt the UK's official religion?
Section 70 of the 1998 Education Reform Act states that, “…each pupil in attendance at a community, foundation or voluntary school shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship.” By law. Collective worship. In schools. By law. Parents have to specifically request excusal
So, you provided an example of a rogue teacher doing something illegal, which she and the school will be sued for, and they will either agree never to do it again and pay a settlement, or they will pay money damages in a court judgment and be ordered not to do it again.
In the UK, though, that student would have to attend a daily act of collective worship required by law.
In community schools the head teacher is responsible for collective worship provision, in consultation with the governors. The majority of acts of collective worship in any given school term should still be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character” A “broadly Christian” act of worship must contain some elements which relate to the traditions of Christian belief and which accord a special status to Jesus Christ. (Circular 1/94, paragraph 63).
Perhaps many nations have aspects that need improvement, and singling one out for particular scorn is not really appropriate?
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
