School Forced to Change it's Name because it was Offensive to other Religions

Political Correctness is taking over the world. It won't be long and art work will be destroyed because naked figures are offensive to some people.

A C of E school has been told to drop the word "saint" from its name in case it offends other religious groups.

The practice of calling schools after saints or bishops alienates people from other faiths and non-believers, say officials and councillors in Islington, north London.

The row is over the name of the first Church of England secondary school to be built in the borough, which lost control of education five years ago after Ofsted found it was running some of the worst schools in the country.

Islington council plans to incorporate the existing St Mary Magdalene Church of England Primary School into a new City Academy for five- to 18-year-olds.

The church, which is giving �2 million towards building costs, has been told by the local authority - a partner in the scheme - that the name of the new school cannot be religious.

James Kempton, children and young people spokesman for the council's ruling Liberal Democrat party, said a consultation had been launched because of concerns over the use of the word "saint".

School told to drop its 'offensive' saint's name

*mod edit: shortened URL with BB code to preserve page format

[edit on 7-11-2004 by Spectre]

I'm a bit confused, In the US Catholic schools always carry a religous based name, but they are private. Is this a private catholic school, or a public school with catholic funding?

Some people need to lighten up, take their political correctness and shove it, and just stop causing problems that wastes everyones time and energy.

I get so ticked off when the majority of people have to change something around just to satisfy the minority of people that are offended by it. People just need to realize that the world doesn't revolve around them, and that they are an insignificant dot within the vast population of the earth.

Whatever happened to majority rules?

Originally posted by Tripnastic
I'm a bit confused, In the US Catholic schools always carry a religous based name, but they are private. Is this a private catholic school, or a public school with catholic funding?

It's neither. C of E - Church of England, a bunch of Protestants, it's also the state religion of the UK. Part of HM's title is "Defender of the Faith".

Originally posted by Slayer
Some people need to lighten up, take their political correctness and shove it, and just stop causing problems that wastes everyones time and energy.

This is an example of one of the big problems we have today. It's all about the outside. The inside can be ugly and dying, but as long as the outside is serene and pretty and unoffensive...it's ok...



[edit on 6-11-2004 by Thorfinn Skullsplitter]

I am a bit surprised, after all it is a CHURCH school, why cannot it be named after some Saint ??

If it is a GOVERNMENT funded and run school, fair enough, it should be neutral on religion so anyone from any ethnic or religious background can attend without being bombarded with religion.

Golly it's like saying a military academy must not teach about those horrid guns and glorify war ???

A CHURCH school is supposed to be pretty strong on religious dogma and morals, that is the whole idea of it. You send your kids to a CHURCH school for religious instruction as well as a general education. Nothing wrong with that if it is by choice.

If everybody reasons this way, we should change a lot of landmarks (St John's, Canada, St Mawgan, Cornwall, etc). Moreover, I don't think a Muslim or Catholic would send his/her sons to a Church of England-run school.

Originally posted by Kakugo
If everybody reasons this way, we should change a lot of landmarks (St John's, Canada, St Mawgan, Cornwall, etc). Moreover, I don't think a Muslim or Catholic would send his/her sons to a Church of England-run school.

Actually...

One of my roomates at a Cof E boarding school that included the words Church of England in its title was a Muslim. His parents chose it for its academic record...

The church is only giving �2 million towards the �30 million, with the rest(as far as I can work out) coming from the government.

The British government had this "fantastic"(pff) Idea of building schools with mainly public money, then allowing "sponsers" to pay �2mill towards the cost of a �30mill school. Nice idea in that the government doesn't pay so much, bad idea in that even tho the private sector only paid a small amount of costs, they get a HUGE say in the running of the school.
Many teachers are against this, I also work in a school in a non teaching role and I am opposed to private interests in the day to day running of public schools.
City academies 'worry teachers'

Because mainly public money is being used in this construction project, the church should have no real reason to complain, if they wanna be the ones to name the school, then by all means pay the full amount, or a larger amount than the government. Until then the church in my view doesn't have a right to decide.

On the other hand, local Muslim and Jewish representatives have said they had no problem with the name.
Row over schools name