Same here.
The news story is typical “It’s fun to be outraged!” though. If you don’t know about Ash Wednesday it’s easy to mistake the mark for a smudge of dirt.
I can see the teacher needing to apologize, but national news? Geez
I’m glad that I’m not the only one that doesn’t remember seeing people wearing ashes.
It’s possible that I saw someone with a smudge and didn’t give it enough thought to remember.
I’ll know what to look for next year.
Life presents us with something new once in awhile. It certainly keeps things interesting.
Yes. When I moved to the east coast at age 28. A coworker had it on and I thought she got printer toner on there by accident.
Prior to that I lived in Washington State, Alaska, and California and had never seen it.
I have not moved from the East coast in the last 20 years and still see it regularly, but I cannot speak to it’s current prevalence on the west coast.
This occurred in Bountiful, Utah which isn’t that far from Salt Lake City, but used to be far more conservative and Mormon. Could still be.
Growing up in my neighborhood the 60s and 70s, there was little difference between church and school. Not quite church, but damn near everyone was Mormon.
Easter isn’t as big of a celebration for Mormons as for most Christians, and Ash Wednesdays are not celebrated. I had never heard of them until reading about it as an adult.
probably because you were in Baptist country where they don’t do that
It typically doesn’t look all that much like a cross , but still there are enough Christian sects that use ashes that I would expect a teacher to be aware of the fact.
As far as " have I ever seen ashes on someone at work or school" - of course I have. I live in NYC and the NYC metro area is about 36% Catholic. When I’ve worked in jails and prisons, I could even receive ashes at work.
I am Episcopal, we have two services at my congregation, one at noon and one at 7:00PM. I attend the evening service because of work hours, so most will not see the cross I get. But if and when I am able to retire I will go to the early service and may be out and about with the cross on my forehead.
See Post 44.
Yeah I saw that. Doesn’t matter - I still expect teachers to know about things that may be outside their personal experience. Maybe not a whole lot about them - but enough to know that it might not be dirt on Ash Wednesday. Especially since other articles said he tried to explain the significance to his teacher and had explained to his classmates who asked.
She was either ignorant of any customs outside her own religion or just plain didn’t feel she needed to accommodate her student’s religion- and telling the kid it was “inappropriate” sounds like she knew exactly what it was. After all, you wouldn’t tell a kid it was “inappropriate” to have dirt on his face.
Do you actually know any Mormons from Utah, let alone from Bountiful?
You simply can’t comprehend the insular nature of far too many people there.
Unfortunately, it does not surprise me that a Mormon teacher would have absolute no clue about Ash Wednesday or the significance of the customs.
And how many religions/sects of religions should the average teacher know the rituals for? Catholic rituals may be an ever day thing for you, but in some places it is something obscure you might sometime run across on TV or in a book or something. Still today, when I hear Catholic rituals described you might as well be describing something from the Yanamami from how “exotic” and outside my experiences they are. (It was only a couple of years ago that I remember ever hearing of the concepts of “Advent” and the “Advent Calendar.”)
It’s not just a Catholic ritual, it’s practiced by other Christian denominations too. And running across it on TV or in the newspaper or in a book is pretty much the level of knowledge I’m talking about. I don’t expect teachers to know all the details of every religion - just enough to know that the Muslim or Jewish student isn’t refusing the ham sandwich because she’s picky or when the kid is telling you the smudge on his forehead has a religious significance it could be true. After all, I know enough not to offer a Mormon tea or coffee.
I saw zero people in my living room with ash on their forehead Wednesday. In the past when I was actually out and about it was not at all uncommon. I was raised Catholic but I don’t remember if we ever went to church on Ash Wednesday.
I’m going to go with ignorance and I don’t see why we have to question everyone’s motives nowadays. Ignorance abounds and I highly doubt you know the minutiae of all the religions out there. You seem to think ashes are ubiquitous and they are not. Like I said I never saw it once until I moved from the West coast to the east coast at 28. I imagine it’s even less commonly encountered in Utah.
She shouldn’t have done this, but the true test is whether she does it again. Somehow I doubt it.
I absolutely don’t know the minutiae of all the religions around nor do I think ashes are ubiquitous. Let’s make this a hypothetical. You’re a teacher. You see a kid who has a mark on his forehead. It’s not bothering anyone and it’s just a smudge. You ask the child about the mark and he tries to explain it’s a religious ritual that you have never heard of ( never seen it , never heard it mentioned on TV or in a movie, nothing)
Why would the correct response ever be “That’s not appropriate in this school, go wipe it off”. It’s not dangerous, it’s not a symbol or a word that could be offensive to others - it’s just a smudge. What is the reason that this teacher insisted that it be wiped off right away , even after the boy told her it was a religious ritual?* Why couldn’t she check with the principal before demanding that he remove the ashes in front of his classmates. The only reason I can see is because she didn’t feel she needed to make any sort of accommodation for his religion. (well, it’s not the only reason, but it’s the least bad one) If you’ve got a better explanation for why she did this in spite of the kid’s explanantion, I’m anxious to hear it
- which I found in articles I discovered after my original post
I noticed me and maybe three others out of roughly 200 people. Mine actually came off slightly after shift started because of my habit of wearing a hat most of the time.
Re Catholic recommendations for Ash Wednesday, as cited --one reckons that a fair few people tend to be “spotty” as regards observances of the stuff they’re supposed to observe, to do with their religions…?
My impression is that in England, the ashes-on-forehead thing is done only by Catholics, and by the fairly-extreme “High-Church” (close in many ways, to Catholicism) sub-set of the Church of England (=Episcopalian). I had never seen or heard of this practice before my early twenties: my family was essentially atheist, my school Congregationalist (kind of Presbyterian-oid). I first encountered it, actually, in a pub; there were a group of us, followers of a particular hobby, who did regular evening get-togethers, the pub being where we met – it was Ash Wednesday evening, and one guy was “marked” accordingly, and explained what it was about. Maybe the pub part was incidental for him – just where the meet-up was; perhaps he stuck to soft drinks for the evening: don’t remember – it was many decades ago.
I teach in a pretty Catholic and Lutheran area and have done so since 2006.
Nope, not really. Maybe once, but I would have expected more often. Perhaps parents take their kids after school most of the time.
I spent twelve years in Catholic school. We had mass on Ash Wednesday. Seeing ashes was the norm of my childhood.
There is no actual requirement in Catholicism to leave the ashes on until they just fall off. There isn’t even a requirement to place them in a cross in the forehead. Long ago the norm was men had a little bit of ash sprinkled over their head. Women got the ashes on the forehead rather than sprinkled on their hats and scarves that they wore in church. How the ashes are prepared before being placed matter too. Just dry ash is fine That was how my mom would get ashes to take to my grandmother in the nursing home on Ash Wednesday. It’s common to add a touch of water to get some initial stick but that dries out pretty quickly and then the ashes start falling off. I’ve heard of oil being used to keep the ashes around longer. I never saw it.
Ashes to Go probably has a big effect on seeing them more often across the US. That’s a recent development. It started small in 2010 with three Chicago based Episcopal congregations. It expanded to the entire Episcopal diocese in 2011 and got media coverage. Other churches picked it up nationally in 2012 and in 2013 that expanded overseas.
I’d suspect more people are actually receiving ashes as a result. I’d also suspect there’s a shift in many areas to the people receiving ashes being more visible as a result of where that happens. Things really are different now than they were a decade ago.
Around here I personally saw Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran and Methodist churches with notices about imposition of ashes. I suspect the local Presbyterians did as well, but I didn’t go by that church this week. Some had morning services, some in the evening, and the Catholics had both.
That would be “anointing of the sick” with the priest applying a dab of oil. No relation to Ash Wednesday.