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Accommodate All Faiths, Or None
The New York City Council last week voted to add two Muslim holidays to the city's public school calendar, citing the annual observance of Christian and Jewish holidays. Mayor Bloomberg objects, saying the city isn't obligated to accommodate all faiths: "If you close the schools for every single holiday, there won't be any school." Who's right? In a country with so many faiths, should public schools observe any religious holidays?
School kids across America will hate me for saying this, but it is probably time to change the way we deal with religious holidays in the public schools. We need to make a change. American public schools should not be closed for any religious holidays. Each child could then be given an excused absence for any of his or her designated religious holidays.
Our increasing religious pluralism in this country does mean that kids may miss too much school if all faiths are accommodated. But our vibrant religious pluralism depends on our ability to treat all faiths equally, so all faiths MUST be treated equally. Close for all, or close for none.
In the 19th century, when public schools used the McGuffey's Readers as a textbook, there was no perceived problem. The McGuffey's Readers were so completely and totally Protestant indoctrination, it is hard to believe that anyone thought it could be a text for the general public school student. That America did not establish any one religion; it had no need to do so. The country was functionally Protestant. No wonder Catholic immigrants quickly realized they needed their own schools.
In the era of the McGuffey's Readers, Christian holidays dominated the school calendar; Jewish holidays did not get added to public school calendars until well into the twentieth century. Today this limited approach will no longer suffice as many school systems are beginning to recognize.
Bad news kids. My recommendation is that you get only your own religious holidays off from school, and even worse, you will need to make up the work.
By
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
|
July 7, 2009; 4:42 PM ET
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Posted by: Paganplace | July 13, 2009 8:04 PM
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: Farnaz1Mansouri1
you write
"...we can permit students to absent themselves on days especially sacred to their different regions, holding them responsible for the work they miss. Privileging one group of religions has hints of establishment and is discriminatory."
Yes, and didn't you write somewhere that it might have been better to have an Einstein day, a Darwin day, a Melville day, a Mark Twain day et al where their contributions to world culture is celebrated and discussed at schools on their birthdays? Perhaps good schools do this anyway.
Faith schools raise kids to believe what the kids in the other school/s don't believe, setting the stage for future inter-faith disagreements, it seems to me.
There must be a better way.
Posted by: colinnicholas | July 12, 2009 10:46 PM
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Colinnicholas writes:
Accommodate All Faiths, Or None?
None sounds perfect.
=========================
Agreed. Again, we can permit students to absent themselves on days especially sacred to their different regions, holding them responsible for the work they miss. Privileging one group of religions has hints of establishment and is iscriminatory.
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | July 12, 2009 1:39 PM
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besides not allowing Bukas and Hijabs to be worn publically in SECULAR-America, in order to prevent "islamicising" the U.S.A.,
Do not Legalize or recognise any "Isamic Holidays" until another 50 to 100 Years Plus.
It took much longer for ex-Voodoo worshiping Black slaves to "INTERGRADE" and "ASSIMILATE" themselves into modernity.
And Islam, the "Last Abrahamic Religion" (or is it Mormanism?) needs to prove itself boubly so.
Don't forget that it was only 8 Years ago when ISLAM used Us to train them to fly and to build and use Technology against Us only Attack Us. a/k/a making a Religious Statement?
Example: the World trade Centers of 911 (also back 1994) and then the Pentigon and also (Almost) the Capital's CONGRESS! Was not that a statement? Did they not Celebrate on and after 911. includes before 911's?
My My; What short memories you all have. Or is is Islam and their Kids and Parents living here and THE-ABROAD?
Please; Wake-upWorld!
Posted by: SECULARGURU | July 12, 2009 6:06 AM
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Effecting Change,
" Nov. 9, 1973
Dear, Mom
mr. Hoffman has odered Weekly Readers for us this year. They will be uses to be study and adrant Events.
he has paid for the class and Would like us to dring 70cents to him unless it is particularly inconvenient."
Love,
teachers have discretion as to legal and illegal absences. Just like grades.
It's not the one or two absences that we should be worried about.
it's the child that has 30-40 absences that get's forgotten. Out of sight , out of mind...
Children like that don't know religion, family, community or anything else, other then learning how to survive.
And elites wonder why, some of these children come back and raise hell, so to speak.
Jay
This doesn't fall in line with "subject at hand" we need to strike the post
Posted by: James210 | July 11, 2009 7:25 AM
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Accommodate All Faiths, Or None?
Why yes, the very mention of Faith is offensive to Us. By all means make it None.
Your Affectionate Uncle
Posted by: YourAffectionateUncle | July 9, 2009 10:32 PM
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Accommodate All Faiths, Or None?
None sounds perfect.
Posted by: colinnicholas | July 9, 2009 1:08 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
I think this 'issue' is really one of those things which is really not an issue, apart from certain Christians trying to decide they have a special privileged status which is taken to be an endorsement of the content of their religion, when it's really a practical matter of how many teachers and students would show up *anyway,* ...which perceived privilege and 'special status' they get terribly indignant about the idea of having to 'share' (like they own it in the first place) ...with people of 'lesser' religions.
It's about them not wanting to let go of assumptions that they own the country, even if the public schools aren't 'good enough' for them to pay for, but rather taxpayers should pay *them* through 'vouchers' to run sectarian schools for their own kids, ...leaving the public ones for them to *still* try and exclude everyone else's viewpoint but theirs from.
If there's enough people of a minority religion at a school that they may as well call a holiday, rather than deal with all the make-up work, then, great.
There's already talk about rearranging the school year for budget reasons. So what if they *did* work in some other religions' holidays here and there?
Otherwise, yes, why should Jews and Christians have blanket permission to take days off when everyone else has to go through red tape or see their kids punished academically?