School visits

Kilgraston, Bridge of Earn

Sandy Edwards visited this private school on the 24th of January 2012

Kilgraston School is a Catholic, independent boarding school for girls in Bridge of Earn.

This is what the teacher said about the visit:

“The theme for the day when you are visiting is ‘ reconnecting with what is most important in our lives’.

It will be a great chance for our girls to hear about Humanist answers to the question of what we need to connect to and how we should do this. In addition, I am sure the girls will be very interested to hear about your work for the Spiritual Care Department.”

The good aspect was that I was able to just sit in their classroom and chat to them and start question and answer conversations. (Giving a lecture or talk would not have been very good; too much like a lesson.) I gave a brief intro. to Humanism, concentrating a lot on what we have in common with belief systems based around asking them how they thought it best to treat and be treated by others. This led to explaining that we did not think it necessary to rely on supernatural or other worldly sanctions for this; human values are set by humans even when religious based, (religious leaders and prophets are humans after all). People set the values and are responsible for their own actions.

I was asked about weddings and funerals and explained. I also spoke about aspects of spiritual care.

It was only a short time, 30 mins. but here are some of the questions:

Is not a belief in life after death comforting?

This led to the concept of not existing, such as before we were conceived. This is a difficult concept as we can’t imagine non-existence easily, but it fits with this being our only life. What was envisaged as heaven or hell was a more humorous discussion. It is always good to bring in some humour, being too serious is not a relaxing atmosphere.

When did I lose my faith?!

I explained that, although at school I had school prayers and religious festivals I was not convinced so I did not have much to start with! Probably being a biologist (and looking at stars) helped as I had an understanding of the world, life and death. This allowed me to point out that when we are babies we have no faith, this is taught to us later. Also this is our only world zooming through space and we should care for it.

One of the teachers suggested that the teachings and stories of Christ were good moral tales.

Certainly true for some but there are masses more stories on this theme without bringing in supernatural influences. Aesops Fables, and lots of legends deal with this and in modern times Star Trek, created by a famous humanist, deals a lot with moral and ethical dilemmas in a rational and secular way.

I was asked about marriage and could say that to us it is a personal choice; but honesty in a relationship was important. I was not married to my partner, but did this make me a bad person?!

As the theme was “reconnecting” we talked about how such things as music and food unite people across ethnic, religious and gender boundaries

Finally I asked them to think of all the people who they relied on at their age: parents, teachers, shopkeepers, doctors, politicians etc. and asked them to think that that would be them in the future and how would they want the world to be.

It was a pity it was so short as I am sure they had a lot more questions to ask.