something nasty in the woodshed
So, a "committed Christian" teaching assistant in Stockwell is without a job because she couldn't bear to listen to a seven-year-old read to her out of Harry Potter.
It all started when the little girl's mother complained to the teacher that the child's reading book was too easy, and the girl herself chose Harry Potter. The teaching assistant simply refused to hear her read it, saying the Bible tells us witchcraft is "an abomination."
This all happened last year, and it's now in the news because the teacher (with the help of a "committed Christian" barrister) is claiming religious discrimination. She claims that the school "discriminated against her as a born-again Christian and put her at a disadvantage compared with teaching assistants who were not of her faith."
The deputy head of the school told the court yesterday that it is the view of the school that it is perfectly reasonable to discipline a teaching assistant for refusing to hear a child read Harry Potter; the case continues.
Isn't that interesting? So let's see. First, I'd be interested to know what the "too-easy" book was that she had earlier thought was appropriate for the girl: was it chosen for its educational potential, or because the subject-matter was "safe"?
Second, I'd like to see a list of all the other books she would find inappropriate for a child to read. The Hobbit is clearly out. To say nothing of The Lord of the Rings. Philip Pullman goes without saying, but what about Narnia? It may be a so-called Christian allegory, but those children are dangerously fond of magical potions - and CS Lewis was far too influenced by King Arthur, which will clearly have to be banned. What? The Matter of Britain, you say? Well, never mind that. Out it goes. Britain was founded on false principles, anyway.
Tom's Midnight Garden features a ghost. Charlotte Sometimes, as featured on this blog recently, is about time-travel. Bedknob and Broomstick! And what about Mary Poppins? (This brings us to the tricky subject of Disney movies, but Snow White was always going to be out, and as for that Aladdin...!) It's a shame to see my beloved Brothers Grimm on the pyre, but so be it. All those German peasants were clearly in the pay of the devil and didn't even know.
The Iliad, The Odyssey, and anything else featuring pagan religion will have to go. Sorry. Out go Jason and the Argonauts and the Trojan Horse. By that token, all Renaissance art is out. Along with Arthur I think the Mabinogion (with its magic pigs) will be verboten. Once you've done for the old British myths you've also done for the Pre-Raphaelites. Thence William Morris and even, I suppose, Frank Lloyd Wright with all his Taleisin this and that. Basically, the Welsh are taboo. Sorry. Lots of chapels but, you know - too superstitious.
Maybe best not to think about learning Latin or Ancient Greek, then - all those pagan texts.
And when this teaching assistant's child - if she should have one - reaches GCSE level - what then? Will he or she be allowed to opt out of Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet? Ghosts and potions abound. "Excused from exam requirements" - will it mean no qualifications for "committed Christian" children, or will they get a special non-GCSE GCSE?
So that's it. I think really no really "committed Christian" should even think about becoming a doctor, an art historian, an architect or a - oh! A teacher.
Charlotte's Web.
If this woman is compensated for her refusal to support the educational system, it will be my money and yours that will pay her. If she is compensated because she disagreed with a small child's choice of reading matter, things could get very interesting indeed. Remember: there are teaching assistants of every faith.
The Hindu teaching assistants might balk at battle scenes. Judy Blume might make both Christian and Muslim teaching assistants unhappy; and many books are full of the delights of sausages, which some teaching assistant might find to be a bad influence on Jewish or Muslim children. A Zen teaching assistant might be offended that she was supposed to, like, care. And what if a Wiccan teaching assistant felt discriminated against by the insistence of "committed Christian" values in the classroom? You can imagine them cat-fighting over Beltane in the cloakroom - oh, wait, that's too fun. Well, you get the picture.
Let's restrict our thinking to those books which display a tolerance of necromancy. Let's not even get into the sex thing, or (potentially - who knows? Remember, everyone has human rights; nothing is sacrosanct) even gender equality. We'll just ignore sexual-preference equality, that'll be the first to go. No, let us stick to the topic at hand. Witches.
So come on, let's have it! I'd love to see a list of books this woman would refuse to let a child read. We could present it at the court and test her reaction.
Then let us talk about whether she should be compensated or sacked.
26 comments:
Excellent post - people that idiotic make my blood boil too.
Books she should refuse to let a child read? Well, the Demon Headmaster (obviously), Meg and Mog etc etc
Though the Bible, with its jolly tales of rape, murder, revenge, fornication, violence etc is of course suitable reading for any child...
This is nothing new or surprising, I'm afraid. When we lived in Cornwall, for instance, there was a whole group of Pentecostal Christian parents at the school where my husband was teaching who put pressure on the school governors to prevent the teaching of Macbeth at GCSE, for the same reason: that the play contains witchcraft. It worked too. Another one of Shakespeare's plays was chosen (the syllabus usually allows for a choice) and that state of affairs presumably continues to this day.
I ran a second-hand bookshop in the same town. One day one of the parents mentioned above came into the shop and very politely bought the Witches' Bible that had been on display in the window. It cost a cool £25. When I innocently enquired if he was a pagan, he fixed me with a vile stare and said he was a Christian and was buying the book in order to burn it.
Unfazed, I pointed out my display of other occult books and suggested he bought those as well. 'Destroy as many as you like,' I urged him cheerily.
His judgement cometh and that right soon ...
Jx
Christian bashing is article four on the PC catechism -stuck between Labor Party support and gym membership. What a laugh. Sitting-in-cafes doing things more sensibly done at home is number one of course. ha ha. And there's about ten altogether; slip up on just one and you're out ("OOOH!- is my face red!"). Well what's fashion anyway, it never lasts, PC is about as permanent as parasols. Nothing changes.
RH, hang around. You'll see I'm not "Christian-bashing." I'm "so-called 'committed Christian'-bashing" - there is a big difference. Wait till I get my parasol really flailing.
What I object to is the use of my money, which would be better spent getting our kids to read more, for paying off people who are opposing the education of children. Education does, of necessity, involve the exposure of young minds to unpalatable ideas, whichever of the ideas in our culture a given person may find unpalatable. Science and algebra, in my case.
Now if you'll excuse me I must go wallow in a bubble bath, and then go and write my magnum opus on Louis MacNeice in a coffee shop. The deadline is finally looming.
Jane, I keep forgetting there is NOTHING you haven't done! And, you know, at least that guy wasn't asking for government money to burn those books.
Quink, you are my star pupil, the only one who added to the list! (Meg & Mog... gulp! The thought!)
Yes well this disgruntled woman with the 'exceptional' child can be mighty proud of losing someone their job. What a hero. Maybe she needs a school where anything goes? Of course she'd never complain about shit-filled TV and movies; that's entertainment.
Errr... no? This woman asked the teacher if her child could have a slightly harder reading book as the child was reading above the level of the one she'd been given. The child chose an unexceptional, bestselling children's book that was sitting in the classroom, for her reading practice. The classroom assistant then refuses to listen to the child read - which is her job, and it is the child's reading skills which are her concern, actually, not the book itself - and instead delivers a lecture calling the book an abomination! I think if that happened to me when I was in 2nd grade I'd have told my mom too!
No one asked the teaching assistant to place her religion firmly in front of her professional opinion of the child's reading skills.
I'm really not sure what you're getting at here, RH. You're saying no child should ever ask for a harder book? What?
Why on earth would someone beat up a thing like this? It's trivial. Teachers don't have to be robots. The teachers I remember best are those who dropped the mask by trotting out their view of the world. It made me think. That's what learning does.
Principle is a marvellous thing, but becoming rare in W. civilisation.
And punishable.
I almost got into a spot of bother once for bringing some tarot card images to (adult) creative writing classes for the purpose of kickstarting some imaginative freeflow writing.
I suppose one should be thankful that Harry Potter and Meg and Mog are not banned in schools; that it's just the occasional loony who wants to do that. Not sure that it has much to do with 'committed' Christianity. Some of my best friends are etc.
If I were a teacher, I'd have no problem with a student reading to me from the bible or koran, even though both these books are the products of psychotic fantasies. They at least have literary, cultural and historical value, even if their contents have led to immeasurable human suffering.
The "committed Christian" teaching assistant – who, I must say, displays an astonishing degree of immaturity for a 47 year-old – is clearly unsuited to having charge of young minds.
This is a good piece, Ms Baroque. Thanks.
My German-born religious studies teacher in primary school turned out to be a fanatically Christian supporter of Hitler - she was kicked out. I now operate on the rebuttable presumption that teachers of faith should be elsewhere, not in schools.
Excellent piece, Ms Baroque. I notice r.h. pointedly refuses to actually answer your questions - why is that, do you suppose?
Brilliant - if you don't get quoted in next week's Guardian Review I shall want to know why.
I've asked my sister to come post a comment, but she's busy - she kind of re-balanced the issue in some interesting ways, though. First of all, she points out what I had already sensed, which is a gap in my reasoning - just around the place where the assistant teacher refusing to listen to, turns into the assistant teacher saying children shouldn't read, certain things.
In the model my sister outlined to me the balance of power was shifted back onto the system and away from this one woman. My sister agrees that the woman shouldn't be compensated out of state funds, but she feels the school could and should have played a longer game, maybe getting agency staff or some other assistant to cover for this one woman, with this one child/book, while they sorted out the actual issue in some more sustainable way. She agrees that maybe teaching assistant isn't quite the right job for her but says that it is absolutely the right of the woman not to have to listen to something that probably strikes her in the same visceral way as, say, listening to "Mein Kampf" might strike me.
I think that's about it. I hope she'll be along in a day or to to say whether I've got that right.
Apparently I extrapolated rather a lot.
I still think it seems like all the work in this equation, and all the accommodating, is still all being done by whoever is the more tolerant and inclusive, only to the effect of underlining the other party's right NOT to be inclusive, but apparently that is the great conundrum of our time. I believe Joseph Heller had a word for it.
Principle is indeed a marvellous thing, but I don't think censoring young minds is. Besides, if the woman was too dim to come up with a better strategy ("Oh, I'm not too keen on Harry Potter, why don't we read...?") , rather than get herself splashed across the media worldwide (c'mon this story has happened many times before), then I really do wonder whether she should be working with young people.
Oh, good luck with the reading by the way...
The Bible and Koran -psychotic fantasies?
Boy, what hysteria.
I'll answer any question at all, but won't descend to 'meemees'. However seeing my last two comments are unchallenged, I take it you agree with them
But listen, calm down, stop getting so upset. Have another latte and forget about it.
-Robert.
(I knew Hitler would be along eventually)
Miss Baroque, don't take this wrong, but I'm totally bamboozled by your final paragraph. I'm sure you could make it clear if you relaxed.
Common lingo is aligned with common sense. Everyone has it, but submitting can be a bit of a breakthrough.
-Robert.
Hi Ms Baroque
Rantastic! And the comments are even more lively. Nothing to add really except to say that the last para on your last comment is PERFECTLY CLEAR to me - sorry RH, it is just you.
xxx
Pants
I'm increasingly suspicious of people who feel the need to qualify "Christian" with "committed", especially having been there, done that myself and grown up somewhat. It spells a narrow, literalist, authoritarian reading of the bible and, often, a politics of fear.
I have to say, many a Christian--even many a fairly conservative Christian, which is what "committed Christian" really means--would be unhappy with the way the teaching assistant has behaved. Ultimately, it's fear that caused her to react the way she did: fear of the book's effect on the girl's mind. This despite the fact that the New Testatment says "God has not given us a spirit of fear".
I also wonder, has she read the Harry Potter books (which I haven't), or was she just reacting to what she had heard about them? If the latter, aren't we doing more or less the same as her in reacting to the press reports?
We don't have 'committed' Christians here in Australia. Not yet. Foreign ways do get here eventually (the focaccia took 20 years, by way of California), but it's a slow raft. Meantime I'd never heard of it of course. So thanks Andrew for the definition. Mind you, fear for someone else is a poor explanation, it takes guts to stand alone. So quink you might be happy in a world full of lying pimps. And we all know keeping your mouth shut is the way to get on. It's smart alright, shrewd. But I don't have any respect for it. And deep in their hearts, nor does anyone. They'd rather the truth.
Meanwhile Australia has a new Imam, just sworn in. The last bloke got the boot, for statements like this:
"Your half-naked women in the streets are like slabs of meat."
Yes and lots more. And oh my goodness gracious, was that big news, an attack on our highest culture, finest scenery. Unfortunately the new bloke doesn't seem much better. When asked about the previous honcho he said this: "No one should be prosecuted for honesty. You have to say the truth; your own truth."
Yes well what jolly good advice that is for Christian clerics, who haven't told the truth in one hundred years. Too frightened.
Religion is such a highly-fraught divisive topic, based on all manner of ludicrous and unproveable magic tricks - like the resurrection, for instance - I'm beginning to think it an extremely bad thing to have kicking about in human society. At least with fiction, you know where you stand. In a bus queue, usually.
Problem is, if we ban religion, what to do with all the people who believe in it? Answers in a blog comment box, please.
Jx
R.H. I'm surprised you read my comment and concluded the teaching assistant must be a lying pimp... But, yes, a world in which people don't manipulate young children in order to hammer home their rigid minded and ill-informed dogmas is fine by me.
Right, children!
Quink, I think you've got it there - I like the idea that the assistant could have distracted the child... I guess she;d already tried that with whatever the first book was.
RH, well, I agree that "psychotic fantasies" is an inaccurate description of the Bible and Koran. It IS a shame they are lost in the mists of time. However, Francis' basic position is clear: they give him the heebie-jeebies as much as dear old Dumbledore does this born-again lady.
RH, and you say you will answer anything but Matt is right: you didn't! But I hate arguing, so let's drop it maybe.
TSP, channelling Scooby Doo again are we? It suits you!
Andrew, hi there! Yes, clearly I was objjecting to this usage - "committed" as a euphemism for "born-again" rather co-opts the whole arena of personal - well - commitment. Like you couldn't be a committed liberal Quaker. I found it an offensive term.
And according to my sister's reading of the episode, the aoman's fear wasn;t for the young kid's mind - it was for her own. Is that right? I think the emphasis on the girl may be my extrapolation. Then again, it may not.
I like that, God has not given us a spirit of fear.
I read the first three HP books - they were really fun! I mean, I don't suppose there's much getting around the fact that they are all about being a witch. Learning spells. Going to class with your wand. You know.
RH, I'm sure you do! And while it may take guts to stand alone, that doesn;t make it always the best course of action. Of course the woman needs courage to make a stand on principle; but her principle may be misplaced, anmd while that is not our concern, neither is her pluckiness and courage.
That "slabs of meat" guy made the press huge-time over here too. And of course he was also making a stand on preinciple. That really does encapsuilate why I think the chicef, sacrosanct, number one incontrovertible principle has GOT to be tolerance for others! Not for others to be intolerant - but that we realyl do all have to try and rub along. That's why in the UK the laws have all been about inciting hatred, etc. Yu can do or say what you like but if you incite others to intolerance then it's bad.
Jane, kindly invite comments in your OWNcomments box if you please! This one is worse than a bus queue at the moment.
Quinkm, the dilemma is that we all have ill-informed dogmas - that is, we all believe things and no one can be well-informed about absolutely everything... hence the need for a common standard, ie tolerance. You know, if people want to believe they are the only ones who are right, let them - but on their time and not on taxpayers' money.
Comments closed, actually.
Post a Comment