Maya Forstater

The fact that we - all reasonable people! - quiet strongly disagree about this suggests it should be optional rather than obligatory.

My only point is that participation, whether optional or not, can have a profound positive influence on children - you can have a sense of learning, even of belonging, through participating, without feeling that a belief that isn’t yours has been oppressively imposed on you

I think that's a strong argument but very difficult to prove! And surely it can have a different effect if the children have a strong (other) religious identity

Perhaps, although @sathnam makes the point that a strong faith shouldn’t be troubled by a rival attraction. I think even amongst the notionally Anglican population, common knowledge of the things children of my generation learned has diminished, & that’s a shared cultural loss

I think that in an increasingly multi-faith society, where prevalence of Christianity is diminishing and other faiths and secularism increasing, we should put our efforts into evolving our shared cultural connection away from single-faith based one - to something more inclusive

Of course! But none of that requires non-Christian children being forced to sing hymns in assembly

Ultimately, I think the difference between our viewpoints is that the parents in this case (& you) regard it as depriving children of rights to freedom of thought, whereas my feeling is that to do so would deprive them of learning and culture that could enhance their lives