Brian Rudman: School's prayer part of long tradition of ignoring the law

There's a certain irony about a row breaking out over the Lord's Prayer being recited at a state school assembly just a few days before we all stop work for a week or more to mark the said Lord's son's birthday.

All I can say on behalf of the heathens flocking to the beach is that we've been celebrating at this time of the year for much longer than the Christians. It's they who hijacked our holiday, not the other way round.

As for the nonsense that's broken out at Victoria Ave School in Remuera, I just can't believe that the school's board of trustees has spent the last two years fighting the indefensible.

Board of trustees chairwoman Sarah Fyfe says: "We are not religious zealots. We are not promoting any sort of religion. It is about the tradition and history of our school."

This is after local parents Dr Daniel Wu and Dr Nicki Butt were "surprised and annoyed" that their 5-year-old was made to stand and recite the Lord's Prayer at an assembly to which parents were invited.

That was two years ago and since then Dr Butt has been objecting, to no avail, first to the school, then the Ministry of Education, then through the long-winded mediation processes of the Human Rights Commission.

Now she's applied for a hearing before the Human Rights Tribunal.

Mrs Fyfe says the school has "bent over backwards to accommodate the issues" by offering to take the child out of assembly for the duration of the prayer. They can do that by a loophole in the 1964 Education Act which allows schools to "close" for a limited time each week for the "purpose of religious instruction" and so circumvent the secular nature of state education introduced in 1877.

Dr Butt objects to this sleight of hand, saying she doesn't want her child marginalised at the age of 7, and rightly so.

It's identical to the fiasco at North Shore City Council over the opening prayer at council meetings where the majority of token Christians voted that the objector - who as I recall was a Christian anyway - should cool his heels in the anteroom until the mumbo jumbo was over and then he could come in for the council meeting proper.

Mrs Fyfe's justification is that a parental survey showed that 91 per cent supported the prayer being kept during assembly. So what is she saying? That's it's all right for the other 9 per cent to stand out in the rain, or linger in the corridor until the Christian business is done?

But I forgot, it's not about religion at all is it, it's all about "tradition". A tradition going back all of 52 years. Well what about the tradition written into our law and going back 128 years that state education be secular?

True, from personal experience, that tradition has long been breached. I can recall assemblies in my school days at far less snobby schools than Victoria Ave Primary where we not only stumbled through the Lord's Prayer, but also sang hymns. I vaguely recall a couple of Jewish kids staying outside, but in my savage state, was not really aware what was going on.

At Mt Roskill Intermediate my class was even bussed off to a Moral Rearmament theatrical event in what later became the Mercury Theatre. I do remember the exotic Africans in their flowing gowns and the excitement of skipping school for a few hours, but I fear any religious message passed us by. As far as I'm aware anyway.

But those were distant monocultural times, part of our history and tradition best chuckled over at school reunions and then forgotten.

As the Anglican Dean of Auckland, Richard Randerson, wrote in this paper a year ago after returning from an inter-faith dialogue in Indonesia, "50 years ago [which was when Victoria Ave School began] Auckland was a predominantly Pakeha and Christian city. To see faith exclusively through the eyes of Western Christianity seemed natural. But that has changed."

He notes how various waves of migration have brought new languages and faiths to our shores. He pointed out that at the 2001 census, ONLY (my word) 60 per cent of New Zealanders affirmed a religious belief. He spoke of the need to inform and educate people on religious and cultural diversity. Victoria Ave would be a good place for him to start that process.