Posts in Religion
The Times: Nicola Benedetti frustrated by music education

Both my husband and I were asked to leave recorder club at our primary schools. I was even asked to mime in a concert. My problem - I didn’t practice. Not sure if that’s because I always forgot or because my mother didn’t remind me. She wasn’t big on helping me with anything to do with school. My husband on the other hand, is musical and spent 20 years as a Sound Engineer and Producer, before switching careers.

Our daughter is very musical, although she’s also not big on practicing. She was very lucky and managed to be offered a 3 year plac, on the Royal Academy of Music’s First String Experience course. She made it to grade 5 violin (then gave up to work more on her ballet), grade 4 piano, grade 3 recorder and is now just beginning grade 5 flute (her only weekly lesson instrument now). She’s spent lockdown teaching herself to play her guitar (Rolling Stones, A Star is Born soundtrack and random Siri inspired tracks), learning how to use GarageBand and back to playing her piano.

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Guardian: Humanists UK launch religious-free assembly materials for schools

British schools are being offered a programme for morning assemblies that are entirely secular and free of religion for the first time.

All state schools in the UK are currently required to provide an act of daily worship of a “broadly Christian character” under the 1944 Education Act.

But Humanists UK, the campaign group for secularism and non-religious belief, has drawn up an alternative model that takes God out of daily school assemblies, focusing instead on respect for the individual, the environment and justice for the developing world.

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