Students Banned from Watching Eclipse “Evil influence”. Parents wonder, “Will We Become like America?”
March 22, 2015
Read to the ironic end. Yes, its become that bad.
A London primary school was criticised for banning children from watching the eclipse for “religious and cultural reasons.”
Pupils at North Primary School in Southall were stopped from watching the solar eclipse directly and had to observe it on screens instead.
Sometimes known as Little India, Southall is a diverse community in west London with a large Hindi population.
Although headteacher Ivor Johnstone would not comment on what the ‘religious and cultural’ reasons were, some Hindu scriptures say that an eclipse makes believers impure.
And fundamentalists believe that they need to bathe immediately after an eclipse and chant the name of God to overcome the forces of darkness.
However parents said children were disappointed by the decision, arguing that religious superstition had been allowed to overshadow science.
Phil Belman, whose seven year old daughter goes to the school, told The Evening Standard: “I am extremely upset about it.
“My child went in having spent an hour preparing and making up her pinhole camera. 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.”
Eclipse vid selection below:
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
March 22, 2015 at 12:35 pm
I doubt very much whether the eclipse was visible from Southall. Certainly it was obscured by cloud across most of southern England.
March 22, 2015 at 1:32 pm
I don’t know if directly watching an eclipse is evil, but it can damage the retina and is highly inadvisable.
From NASA:
March 22, 2015 at 1:33 pm
PS Emphasis in the original.
March 23, 2015 at 9:02 am
I have seen only 2 or 3 partial solar eclipses in my life, and only one was near enough total to have much impact. I was 7 or 8 years old and remember that the light got all “funny” and the sky went so dark that stars were visible and cars had to turn on their headlights.
I’m sure my mother threw me in the tub soon after, and said things like “God only knows how you get so dirty” as she made me scrub.
We were not fundamentalists, but did that qualify for credit under “….bathe immediately after an eclipse and chant the name of God to overcome the forces of darkness”?. If so, it apparently worked—-I didn’t meet “forces of darkness” until I became an adult.
March 23, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Is it still irony when everyone just knows it to be the truth? These “mid America” people that get elected and pass their medieval laws; they’re called “representatives” for a reason…
March 28, 2015 at 10:08 am
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