Metropol

coming from a non-religious family, i recall being asked at school to hold ones hands together and 'pray' to god feeling absurd as a child. i just didn't understand what i was doing.

however, i'm just wondering does anybody recall that crappy hymn book with a two tone blue picture of children singing on the front cover? does anybody know what this book was called?


and don't worry... i haven't started believing in that invisible all powerful mind reading sky man - and besides, he doesn't read metropol anyway.

ahem...! Mr. Nick can hear you.

Blasphemer!

Come and Praise? Published by the BBC and still available today.

We had an overhead projector.

#He Who Would Valiant Be#

#Be Thou My Vision#

Mr McKee got very upset when we didn't sing to his satisfaction.

I think I was a very disobedient child when it came to the indoctrination of God's Holy Love at an early age, never once did sing along or pray and was punished on quite a few times for it.

The dark side was strong with me from an early age, never did see the book though as it was all OHP.

Hey, it's a practical use for lip-synching... probably explains where the countless youtube teenagers acquired the skill from!

Hey if you couldn't take the pressure when the moment came then the results could be literally apocalyptic: god HATES it when people mess up the words to his songs.

however, i'm just wondering does anybody recall that crappy hymn book with a two tone blue picture of children singing on the front cover? does anybody know what this book was called?

As mentioned, this tome was 'Come and Praise'. The manuscript version of the book had a tasteful brown cover rather than the blue. This was later followed by 'Come and Praise 2', a second set of more modern hymns (the original book was mainly comprised of traditional ones). Around the late 90's both books were combined into a single volume which IIRC is the version still in print.

Did you get to experience the excitement of the 'radio assembly'? This was a rather curious affair where you had to assemble at exactly the right time to hear a brief programme on Radio 4, which always cut verses out of hymns to save time ('we're going to leave out verse 4. That's miss out verse 4' the presenter solemnly declared) and featured curious 'live' phone calls to schools in which the person making the call was also the first to speak. Ah well, you did at least get to hear all the hymns performed in early 70's style synth arrangements rather than just plain old piano.

coming from a non-religious family, i recall being asked at school to hold ones hands together and 'pray' to god feeling absurd as a child. i just didn't understand what i was doing.

Indeed, despite going to state primary schools of no religious leaning in the way that CE and RC state schools are, back in the dark days of the late 80's and early 90's you were nevertheless required to be a jolly little Christian unless your parents said you weren't. Being caught not singing or praying during assembly was seemingly one of the most serious offences you could commit.

Even the parent's right to withdraw their children from assembly seemed to be designed as something they should feel guilty for doing. Putting the comprehensive section on sex education asside, the funniest parts from my 1980's compiled junior school prospectus (I still have it now) is the paragraph on Christian worship and how important a part of school life it was, with simply 'Some parents excercise their right to withdraw their children from acts of corporate worship' as the only acknowledgement at all that this was not compulsory. The poor souls excused from praying still had to go to assembly with everyone else to chant 'Good Morning Mr <insert name>, Good Morning Everybody' before they were sent away to the library in full view of the entire school before the C&P was whipped out just to make it clear that they were not the same as everyone else.

Does anyone remember a round robin hymn which went:

Underneath the sea, far away from land,
That's where I will be, shaking on the sand.
Wrattling in my rigging, dithering on my deck,
I'm just a ner-er-er-er-er-er-ervous wreck...

I find it pretty weird that one of OFSTED's parameters for "good" things is a daily act of worship. The whole thing creeps me out; to me it's the sort of thing that parents should have to opt their kid into rather than out of.

Sput wrote:I find it pretty weird that one of OFSTED's parameters for "good" things is a daily act of worship. The whole thing creeps me out; to me it's the sort of thing that parents should have to opt their kid into rather than out of.

I can't agree with that - if you left it to some parents to give their children a grounding in decent behaviour then god knows (no pun intended) how they would end up.

If you strip away the Catholic fear-based firey pit of Hell aspect, Christianity is really about living a decent existence - doing unto others as you would like done to you; having compassion and forgiveness; and more straightforward things like it being wrong to kill.

Those are not an unreasonable things to teach children - and those lessons will stand them in good stead. The idea of Heaven and Hell is a metaphor for action=consequence. Its those who don't believe there are consequences to their actions who do the most hideous things.

As kids develop they will form their own conclusions about a man in the sky, or a woman at the centre of the Earth - and lots of other religious notions in between. They may choose to reject the idea, but its no bad thing to have considered the issue first.

Fundamentalism is, conversely, more damaging than teaching nothing, however.