Victoria’s Story

Hello Parents4Ethics,

I was really pleased to see your website, well done!

I saw you were collecting people’s stories. I’m not a parent, but it’s not so long ago that I was a student affected by the laws surrounding SRE.

As a young Atheist I had to sit in the library during scripture time, the only other kids there being the only two Jewish boys in the school and my best friend who was Buddhist. It being on the Upper North Shore, the school only catered for Christian religions.

I’m sure there were other Atheists at the school, but the kids were sent to scripture anyway because their parents didn’t want them doing nothing. The ‘non-scripture’ kids like us were sent to play in a corner of a library with no direct supervision other than the librarian at the front desk who never paid us much attention. I know from my partner’s family, who are also atheists, that they chose to send their kids to the Catholic scripture for this exact reason, and they ‘thought they should learn something’ in that time.

Atheists shouldn’t be forced to make a choice between allowing their child to roam around unsupervised at school and sending them to listen to things that are taught as truths but just aren’t true, at the risk of confusing/placing contradictions within young and impressionable minds (especially when the Scripture teachers bribe their students with gifts at Christmas and Easter, as they did at my school)

I’ve had a glance at the summary of the Ethics classes and I think it looks fantastic.

I really look forward to the day in the future when I can send my kids to primary school and they’ll be looked after in Scripture time by people teaching secular ethics classes!

Yours sincerely,
Victoria