Religious instruction in schools

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33261, 26 June 1973, Page 14

Religious instruction in schools

Sir,—ln this matter I can assure “Olympus” that I should be more concerned that the school disregarded my wishes than that my children did. I dispute his assertion that State schools do not impose doctrine; participation in prayer, a hymn and Bible-reading explicitly acknowledges a deity, the fact of whose existence I find less provable than the theory of evolution. Christians jealously insist on their right of freedom to worship; free thinkers are equally entitled to their right of freedom not to worship and the requirement that free-thinking parents provide a written request for i their children’s exemption from attending a ceremony of religious observance is an intolerable impertinence infringing their basic human rights. If religious observance in State secondary schools is permissible because nothing in the Education Act prohibits it, why may not readings from Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Dr Ingersoll and Karl Marx at school assembly be similarly justifiable?—Yours, etc., M.C.H. June 23, 1973. [This correspondence is now closed.—Editor, “The Press.”]