A London council has launched an investigation into allegations that pupils at a primary school were banned from watching today’s solar eclipse “for religious reasons”.
Children at the North Primary School in Southall, which is non-religious, were allegedly told not to watch the eclipse for fear of offending religious parents, according to the Evening Standard.
Phil Belman, who has a seven-year-old daughter at the school, was quoted as saying that his child went into school having spent an hour making her pinhole camera through which she could safely watch the Moon pass in front of the Sun. However, she was then reportedly told that she could not participate.
Belman said he met the acting headteacher to discuss the issue and claims that he was told children could not watch the eclipse “for religious and cultural reasons”.
Belman said:
“This is an issue about scientific matters versus religious superstition. I am outraged – is it going to be Darwin next? We will be like mid America.”
Ealing Council confirmed that pupils were not allowed outside of their classrooms to watch the eclipse, but said that they were able to watch the event on television screens inside.
The alleged incident comes as pupils at Paignton school in Devon were also told not to watch the eclipse outdoors out of fears that some of the 700 children may look directly at the Sun and damage their eyes, according to the BBC.
Previously, US pastors had warned that the eclipse was a sign of the ‘end times’ and a message from God to the whole world.
The Independent quoted Texan pastor Bob O’Dell as saying:
“When we look at where the darkness will be, it will be in northern European countries like England and Sweden where we see the rise of Islam and anti-Israel sentiment. Europeans especially should take heed.”
1 Comment
What offends me even worse than the cultural sensitivity nonsense (which will probably turn out to be something else) is the stupid “pinhole camera.” A pinhole camera produces an image of the sun about 1/100 the distance from the hole to the projection surface. If the distance is a foot, the image is about a tenth of an inch. There have been cases of people hurting their eyes because the image is so disappointing they think “that can’t be right” and try to observe the sun through a pinhole.
Far safer would be to take the kids outside and have them look at the shadows of trees on the ground. Even now, before the leaves are out, there will be plenty of natural pinholes created by gaps between the branches, and the images will be several inches across. No, the hole does not have to be round. An even better approach is to use a tiny fragment of mirror to reflect the sun onto a wall. The image is bright and easily viewed by a whole group at once.
Of course we could be REALLY radical and actually teach them how to look at the sun safely with a welder’s glass or silvered mylar, both cheap and readily available.