The article I found of interest this week is called "Psalm-thing awry in 'All About Me' Flap."
http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:AWNB:DCDT&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=1289A84ADFB37A80&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=0ED5223F5C1C57DF
It describes the situation of a kindergarten class that has an "All about me" week for each of the students. Each student gets to do a show-and-tell type thing about their interests, etc. The student's parents are invited to participate. One student is a Christian and nightly reads Bible passages with his mother. That is something important to them. The mom tells the teacher that she'd like to read a Bible passage at her son's "All About Me" presentation. The teacher says no. She says that it is inappropriate and possibly illegal. This is not the first time that a parent has wanted to share something religious with the class. A Jewish family presented information about Hanukkah and Passover.
The mother sued. She felt she had the First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of religion to be able to read a passage of the Bible to a group of children. The federal court sided with the school district. The court said that it was inappropriate for the children to be a captive audience to an adult reading religious texts.
This case brings up some important distinctions in freedom of speech and religion. According to the court, a public school classroom is not as free as the street corner. Schools have the right to restrict speech in order to remain neutral. Particularly, adults are limited in what they can say to children because children see adults as authority figures. Children are particularly vulnerable to proselytization.
One of the articles suggests that if the student and his mother wanted to describe the importance of their religion to the class, that would be acceptable. Actually reading religious scripture is not acceptable.
Someone else contends that the mother had ulterior motives. The babysitter is on record saying that the child's favorite book was not the Bible.
This case leaves me torn. I think a small passage of the Bible would not harm the children. I certainly see why it is troublesome to have an adult authority figure reading religious scripture to small children. If the children learned about religious holidays, then at least a summarized version of religious scriptures must have come up in their discussions. I don't think it is harmful for children to know that there are people who have certain beliefs that they hold very dear. I also see how presenting that in a neutral and appropriate manner would be like walking on a bed of nails. If you leave anything out or if you don't present someone's belief the way they want it to be portrayed, you'd get into all kinds of trouble. It seems appropriate for the individual students to be able to tell their classmates about their beliefs. Kindergartners may not have the skills to do that.
My final view is that students should be free to share with other students. When adult authority figures abuse their power to persuade children to a particular view, that is not ethical.
Below are two other articles on the same case.
http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:AWNB:DCDT&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=1289A84ADB1A1858&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=0ED5223F5C1C57DF
http://docs.newsbank.com/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info:sid/iw.newsbank.com:AWNB:DCDT&rft_val_format=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&rft_dat=128A08492CB753A0&svc_dat=InfoWeb:aggregated5&req_dat=0ED5223F5C1C57DF
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"I think a small passage of the Bible would not harm the children."
ReplyDeleteOf course, then one has to pick a verse, and not all verses are created equal. There's a world of difference between:
"Jesus wept." (John 11:35)
and
"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him." (Numbers 31:17)
As a Christian I believe that the Bible would be good for everyone, no matter how old. However, I also respect the feelings of others and believe they have a right to chose what they are exposed to. In this situations, I could understand the school not wanting the Bible read by an adult, BUT they should not allow ANY religous teaching in the school. Since they allowed others in the past than yes, this is completely discriminatory. If one religion is going to be banned than all of them need to be banned. Otherwise, the mother had every right to read the Bible to her son's class depending of course on what verse. Some are not good for young children especially those not familiar with Christianity.
ReplyDeleteI personally feel that teaching religion in our nation's schools would be a good thing--after all, it doesn't seem like the churches are doing a very good job. Of course, such classes would have to be kept in context in order to prevent proselytizing. Just imagine how difficult (if not impossible) it would be to teach the Reformation or the Crusades while ignoring religion.
ReplyDeleteI think that if parents were allowed to discuss and read stories about other religions then the christian religion should have been treated with the same respect. I don't think that the 2 minutes it would've taken to read the 1 verse would have been and issue. most of the kids probably wouldn't have remembered it later. Kids tend to bounce around form one task to the other. At the same time, if the school was going to keep religion and school separate then it needed to be done for all religions and the assignment should have specified that in its directions.
ReplyDeleteAbby's post says a Jewish family presented information about Passover and Hanukkah it did not say that they read the Torah. It sounds as if the issue is the actually reading of one's holy book. If they wanted to say that every night they read the bible and pray because their religion of Christianity is very important to them then they would have been able to.
ReplyDeleteI think the response to this post shows why it is important to keep religion out of school. How do you determine if each religion gets equal time? How do you determine that every religion is represented? Do you really want to let go of the control of who teaches your child about faith and what is taught?