Assembling

There's been some talk around the Moot House of late as to whether assemblies - religious assemblies - are worthwhile for children. The Archdruid has been, well, less positive about them than she might have been, and I feel that it is only right that I should add my tuppence (€0.02 if you're in Germany - €0.05 if you're in Greece, Spain or Italy).

I have, from time to time, volunteered my services for primary schools to allow them to have some variation in their religious input to their assemblies. I went to a nice Church of England school in rural Somerset as a child, and I have fond memories of trooping off to the church for assemblies held by an aged vicar who talked down to us - often literally, as he tended to use the pulpit - and of singing songs like "Morning has broken" in a ragged way in pews which were too big for us, but, being Anglican, too small for any normal-sized adult. This until my parents noticed that I had a decent singing voice and packed me away to choir school at the age of 8, where, oddly enough, I almost never attended school assemblies because I had music practices at 07:30 and 08:30 (with half an hour in the middle for breakfast, which was always porridge followed by toast, except on the weekends, when we had a fry-up, and there was no fruit juice, but you had to have either tea or coffee).

Anyway, as I was saying, I have fond memories of school assemblies, and I wanted to allow the local children to have similar ones when they grow up (unless their parents send them off to boarding school, of course, at which the memories are likely to be significantly more brutal, if mine are anything to go by).

Anyway. I offer my services, and after rather a _lot_ of checks, a couple of schools have taken me up on the offer. I tend to keep quiet about the Beaker bit and concentrate on the "Morning has broken" side, to be honest, and then to give a dramatic representation of whatever topic is on the school calendar for that week. With a religious overtone. Sorting the teachers into different piles, dropping lots of waste paper onto the floor: you know the sort of thing.

And I have to say that I've always received lots of gratitude from the schools. Well, the teachers, anyway.

But I think it is good for the children to have some quiet time in the day, where they can reflect on something together, within an ethical framework. And they seem less scared of me round the various villages now. The children whose schools I have visited seem much happier to approach me, and even talk to me. I remember a particular example where a child saw me outside the village shop, and approached me.

"Do you remember me?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, "you're the funny one who did the assembly." Which I think proves my point.

So, there is something special, and community-building, and character-forming, and ethics-framing, about school assemblies - religious ones. And there's nothing wrong with "Morning has broken", either: I turned out to be a nice, Anglican-leaning Beaker folk-person, and that Cat Stevens didn't do too badly for himself, either.