Australia is ostensibly a secular nation. Despite this, every week in public schools time is allocated for 'scripture' class. Because it is 2009, not 1950 (notwithstanding best efforts of our last PM), we now have options: Anglican, Catholic, Baha'i and Buddhist are on offer at Phoebe's school. (Holden's school has Laus Deo as its motto but no religious instruction of any type.)
To date, Phoebe has always chosen 'non-scripture', where they sit around and colour in or do something similarly edifying (an extraordinary waste of school time, but I won't go off on that tangent).
The other day she said to me 'Mum, can I do scripture?'. I remember being attracted by the idea of God when I was a little older than she is now, so I said 'Sure, which one?'.
'Buddhist', she said. 'I want to learn to meditate and stuff.' I grinned to myself, signed the note and that was that.
A few days later, I was ranting about something in the car while she was sitting next to me. 'You know, Mum', she said, 'In Buddhist scripture I learnt about something called Patient Acceptance'.
Hmmm. I must meditate on that.
3 comments:
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Hahaha. I'm an atheist myself. Sent my kids to Catholic high school, because it was the most humane place we could find. The perspective of the less religious on religious concepts can be downright wonderful.
LPC, I've known a surprising number of people send their children to Catholic school because the standard of education is so high ... We even considered it briefly for ours despite both being hardened atheists!
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