'Which witch?' or, The trials and tribulations of the world of work

Harry Potter has again made an appearance in the world known to fans as the world of 'muggles', or to the rest of us, 'reality'. It was reported on Friday that a South London teaching assistant, Sariya Allen, is taking her former school to an employment tribunal. Allen recently quit her job over a kerfuffle with her school after refusing to listen to a child read from a Harry Potter book. She is now launching an appeal against the decision, on religious discrimination grounds. Cries to ban the potty Potter generally come from the Christian community (this case being no exception, as Allen is a Pentecostal Christian) with the arguments usually focusing on protecting children against the evil and biblically-banned 'glorification' of witchcraft. Not this time. Reacting against the book in the way Allen did was not motivated by fears of the 'damage' it might cause to the impressionable mind of the youngster involved. Rather, it was a straight-forward refusal from an adult to engage in an activity supposedly at odds with her religion (erm… reading?). Allen was not damning the book under the guise of child protection, but was candidly 'protecting' herself.

But at whose cost? A child keen on the ever-popular Potter series is no rare, and indeed no bad, thing. Refusing to allow children to engage with imaginative material on the grounds that it might affect their ability to make meaningful and honest decisions about the world is bad enough, but (implicitly) conceding that youngsters may eventually do so if they please, but that adults cannot shows an alarming lack of confidence in an adult's ability to distinguish fact from fiction. More importantly, Allen’s reaction against the alleged ‘religious discrimination’ practiced by the school administration demonstrates an inability to distinguish between one’s responsibilities as a teacher and any responsibility one may feel as a member of a religious community or as a ‘person of faith’.

Interestingly, many children's books are set in magical universes and involve portrayals of witchcraft, most obviously CS Lewis' Narnia series, championed by many Christian institutions for its redemptive Christian message. Apparently this is permissible because the wicked white witch Jardis is killed – yes, murdered in cold blood by the Christ-like talking lion Aslan and his upper-class London friends. As for JK Rowling's Harry Potter, the books do not so much champion witchcraft as demonstrate that there are universal values which can be adhered to by people irrespective of religious conviction, such as friendship, honesty and bravery, which can help people to live decent and fulfilling lives. And to point out again: it is a work of fiction. Perhaps we should be asking, which witch is the one worth wailing about? - Potter, Aslan, or Allen herself?

Sarah Boyes