Consciousness raising...

Until I read The God Delusion, I didn’t really think about the ramifications of a child being described as a ‘Christian child’, or ‘Jewish child’, or ‘Muslim child’. In what Richard Dawkins describes as “consciousness raising", he insists that “there is no such thing as a Muslim child: only a child of Muslim parents. That child is too young to know whether it is a Muslim or not”. The point is by no means pedantic; it really matters. Dawkins points out that we wouldn’t think of describing a child as a ‘Labour child’, or a ‘Tory child’, or - God forbid - a 'UKIP child', based solely on the parents' political affiliations.

I spotted this sign outside a school in Whitby…