Atheist Kids and Bullying: Just an Xbox and a Football Game Away From Redemption

[rug]

This holiday season, ask Santa to stop religious bullying in schools across America.



In a culture saturated with religious symbolism, children of differently believing adults can feel ostracized and doomed. (Photo: Mira Oberman/AFP/GettyImages)

By Amy DuFault
December 23, 2012

I’ll never forget the year my eight-year-old daughter came home from school saying she got in trouble for going to the bathroom.

“I was afraid,” she said, “that the devil was coming out of the mirror to get me.... I wanted Aya to stay with me until I was done.”

Like any parent, I sat her down and asked her to tell me why she would ever think a mirror could spawn something as terrifying as that.

“Susie told me because I didn’t believe in god, the devil was coming to take my soul.”

http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/12/23/atheist-kids-and-bullying-just-xbox-away-god

[enlightenment]

1. I understand why she might want to send her

daughter to a Catholic school, but isn't inviting the kind of problems the child is experiencing? I raised my kid without god or religion and it would never have occurred to me to send him to a religious school. Ever.

I would hate to think that she is sending her daughter to the school to make some sort of point, so I'll assume that the school is the best in the neighborhood where they live.

[rug]

2. The schools are generally better, as you say.

Still, why send a child to a religious school if you're an atheist.

[enlightenment]

3. I don't know the answer to that.

I can't think of a logical reason beyond the potential quality of the education - but is that worth the emotional abuse the child is apparently suffering at the hands of her little 'friends'?

[skepticscott]

5. Maybe she made

the (foolish) assumption that children raised in a religious tradition that puffs up endlessly about its superior morality would have been taught the simplest moral principle of all..to be nice to other people. Or that the kids that her daughter was going to school with would be too young yet to have picked up the hatred for atheists that their parents had been brainwashed into.

[enlightenment]

6. Perhaps.

Whatever the reason, her daughter seems to be paying the price. She should, I think, reconsider her school options.

[PassingFair]

10. I know atheists who live in big houses in crappy school districts that send their kids to ...

parochial schools because the neighborhood schools are dangerous
or ineffective. Parochial schools are the only close alternatives.

[skepticscott]

12. Something like that

is entirely possible here. In real life, sometimes all of your choices are unpalatable.

[enlightenment]

13. I believe I said something about hoping that

the quality of the education was the reason. No argument here.

[Fumesucker]

4. A Boy Named Sue

Maybe they think it will toughen the kid up or maybe they just want the kid to grow to dislike theists.

We sure are good at rationalization, less so at being rational.

[mr blur]

7. Here, you can't send your kids to a Catholic school unless you're a practising Catholic,

known to go to church and send your kids to church. In order to get them into a Catholic school if you are an atheist you'd have to get away with lying about both of those things and why would you do that?

Okay, I have no respect for the RCC but I have enough respect for my kids to not teach them it's OK to lie and "cheat" in order to get what you want.

[cbayer]

9. That is certainly not the case everywhere.

The Catholic schools in Louisiana are full of non-catholics.

[LeftishBrit]

11. That depends to some extent where you are

Catholic schools generally have admissions policies that give preference to practicing Catholics, but many schools do not completely exclude non-Catholics. At least in Oxfordshire, I know several non-Catholics (both atheists and Muslims) whose children have attended Catholic schools, without the need for deceit.

However, it is true that many Catholic schools in the UK have, or have had, admissions policies that discriminate not only in favour of Catholics, but in favour of those whose parents play an active role in church activities. All other considerations aside, this is socially unfair, as better-off parents will generally have more time and resources to engage in such activities. In 2011, such policies were declared illegal:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-15793881

Needless to say, this legal decision attracted complaint from the types (not just Catholics) who think that religious people are oppressed by the evil secular government.

[cbayer]

8. I remember some fear that I might be doing it wrong during grade school.

We lived in a community with a lot of catholics, and the whole confession/rosary/kneeling thing had me scared for awhile, because we didn't do any of that.

But I never felt like it reached the point of bullying at all.

I would be concerned about an 8 year old that thinks satan is going to come out of a mirror and starts bedwetting, though.