Hmm. I’m sure this is just an oversight on your part, but none of those linked stories stated anything about schools banning Santa but at the same time celebrating Kwanzaa. Did you perhaps forget to post those links? As you stated, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find those stories on Google.
I don’t care about them banning all the holidays, but the one where they allow menorahs but not nativity scenes is odd. Those seem pretty congruous to me, but I could be wrong because I don’t know much about Hanukkah (the Catholic schools I went to never taught anything about any other religion). Wouldn’t it be considered a religious symbol? Or is it more like a Christmas tree than a nativity scene?
In any case, I definitely do not feel that religious decorations have any place in public schools.
And I am sorry that your excellent post that really should be a basis of a consensus here, or at least informed disagreement, has been otherwise ignored in deference to bickering. Ah well.
Well then since you are actually serious …
What is the proximate cause of all that time off for the “Yule season”?
Um the fact that the majority celebrate Christmas.
So, sure, I’ll suggest to the various boards of Rabbis, and whatever would be the similar place to go for other religions, to move their major holidays from, say, the Fall for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, to having the Day of Atonement on 12/25, since people are already off then for Christmas.
Nah. I don’t think I will.
For other faiths the major holidays are not in the Yule season; one of the big two for Christians is, but not for the rest of us. No, we are not going to move ours to then. Don’t be silly. And it is goofy to elevate Chanukah … and even more so Kwanzaa … to appear as if they are the Jewish or the Black Christmas. Celebrate Winter. Educate about Christmas and Easter in age appropriate curricula. Educate about a major holiday and some basic tenets of the majority of the world’s (and hence out country’s) faiths, also as appropriate for the grade level. Do the same about Kwanzaa if that is the best way to inform about Black consciousness and do not let that take away from making sure that the role of Blacks in history, of America and the world, gets its fair due (and not just during a “Black History Month”).
But stop pretending that singing “I had a little dreydel …” make singing “Silent Night” okay.
Um, NYC has a ton of black people. More black people than Jewish people–and that is saying a lot. So why in the hell wouldn’t Kwanzaa be a part of the curriculum unless the schools were purposefully trying to ignore black people?
Notice I didn’t say anything about “bending over backwards”. It does not require a weird posture to learn about Hanukkah or any other random tidbit of cultural knowledge. Hanukkah is a part of the curriculum for the Atlanta Public School System, which I attended. Most APS schools are 100% black (the ones I attended weren’t). Again I ask you: Was it ridiculous for us to learn about Jewishy things? If it wasn’t ridiculous for us to learn about a cultural tradition that few of us are ever going to encounter, then why is it such an affront for other people to learn about another cultural tradition that few of them will ever encounter?
I do not see this happening. You may be able to find some biased articles on the web that may or may not paint an accurate portrayal of events, but I seriously doubt there are many public schools lighting kinaras but not decorating Christmas tress. Or singing nothing but Kwanzaa songs at the holiday concert. Perhaps private, explicitly afro-centric schools, but not public schools. Especially ones that are predominately white.
Why not?
And why should “all the students” be included? This never happens. I had Chinese classmates during all 13 years of my public schoolin’, and I never learned about the Chinese New Year. There were a couple of Muslims too, but we never learned about Ramadan or Ashura. The world continued to turn, though. We simply didn’t have enough time in the day to learn about every holiday and religion, though that would have been nice.
Sometimes it’s nice to learn about the world that doesn’t include you or anyone else you know. It makes you aware of how big and complex the world is.
Schools shouldn’t be teaching stereotypes or making broad generalizations. If the school is teaching your kid that all black people celebrate Kwanzaa, it is wrong. I doubt this is the case, though. More likely your son made this leap on his own. Just like when I was a kid, I thought Jewish people were a bigger proportion of the population than they are. No one taught me this. It was just what I assumed on my own.
Why do you assume Kwanzaa is being taught just to include black people? Why can’t it be that Kwanzaa is taught because it’s something to serve up to kids in addition to Christmas (which most Americans don’t need to be “taught”, since they learn about it at home or in church) and Hanukkah? Why can’t it be that it is given importance because “Happy Holidays” sounds more meaningful when it’s not covering just two holidays? Why can’t it be that it’s taught because it is actually kinda-sorta interesting? Why do you assume its value comes solely from political correctness and nothing else?
What stereotype is being taught?
I scoffed because I don’t dig people being forced to celebrate holidays out of political correctness (and then being scolded for not doing it right). If Obama and Michelle celebrated Jewish holidays before they moved into the White House, then fine. But I sincerely doubt they were throwing seders before he became Prez. I understand that’s just how it’s gotta be. But I’m going to love watching people squirm when we get our first Jewish president and he or she is expected to decorate a Christmas tree and carve an Easter ham.
Um…I looked all over for evidence of Kwanzaa being celebrated while Santa Clause was hog-tied, gagged, and locked in the closet, but I couldn’t find anything.
But not the one that you’re pitching a fit–oops, I mean talking dispassionately and cool-headedly–about. Where are the articles about Kwanzaa pushing out all the other holidays that you mentioned earlier? Did you just make that up, or are those real stories?
You haven’t produced a single iota that this is happening. So to throw a head-nod at my friend MeanOldLady, my leg is getting mighty wet right now. I don’t know if I can handle the stink much longer.
monstro, yes it was ridiculous for you to learn about Chanukah in public school.
Why? What harm did it do?
It may shock Citizen Pained to hear this, but despite growing up in Chocolate City during the 80s–when black people were grabbing political power left and right–I never learned about Kwanzaa in school. I didn’t learn about Kwanzaa until I was well into adolescence–outside of school. I’m sure things are different now, but it’s not like from the moment Kwanzaa was created, schools were required to teach it. It’s appearance in the mainstream is very recent. I suspect it’s because a critical mass of participants has been reached, at least in a few places, and that it would almost be un-politically correct to ignore it.
Pagan African rituals?!? As far as I can tell, during Kwanzaa you play some music, talk about history, light some candles and eat dinner. Did I miss the sacrifice to Ougon or something? In any case, something African is not particularly likely to be Pagan, given that the vast majority of the continent practices Abrahamic religions.
Harm? Little, other than misinforming you and, bluntly, increasing your ignorance some.
But I did not claim it did harm; I claim doing so was ridiculous. Teaching a bunch of kids who may know no real Jews about a minor Jewish holiday, and having that be their exposure to that segment of our county’s population and their impression about what Jews do, is ridiculous. The only reason to do it is to try to justify celebrating a Christian holiday in the public school at that time.
Either teach about religion (different than teaching religion) seriously or keep it out of the public school. I vote for the former. But I find the December only lip service to “diversity” to be offensive. Okay, mildly offensive, (I am not crushed or anything) but offensive. I speak only for myself, not for my religious group as a whole.
In short: Chanukah, Bah Humbug!
OK, I agree. I agree that picking a trivial holiday to represent a religion is crazy, and it does misinform. And to be honest, if I had been a Muslim kid or a Hindu kid, I probably would have been resentful that no one had ever mentioned “my” special days. Really, it’s only been the past couple of years that I have even put much thought about non-Jewish, non-Christian holidays. Given the importance that religions plays in both history and current events, this kind of ignorance is sad. A unit on religion should be mandatory in high school, at least.
But I guess if I had my choice over things to get annoyed about in education, extra stuff being taught in schools–even if it’s overblown extra stuff–would be way down the list.
:smack: Because NYC is home to kids from a billion different cultures and languages (okay, only 800 languages), and many black people in NYC aren’t African-American but African or maybe Muslim, and what about the other kids? Or the fact that 1/3 of people are immigrants?
You’re right; maybe Jewish kids in NYC are more likely to attend private day schools or charter schools. :rolleyes: Why do you keep talking about Jewish kids in the “They get it; why can’t we?” voice? Again, at least Jews celebrate their own purported holidays. If Kwanzaa is so important to you, why aren’t you pushing for kids to celebrate it?
It’s ridiculous if the only thing you knew about Jewish people was the Holocaust and Hanukkah.
What I meant was that schools are becoming increasingly sensitive about the santa/Christmas issue and no one is suggesting we remove kwanzaa from the curriculum, despite its political nature and sociopath founder.
When possible, they should. It’s what makes you a good teacher. I’ll make sure to teach it to my students this December if you’d like. I have about 24 black students. I’ll even leave out the part about how the forced celebration is kind of ridiculous in these parts.
Because I’m a teacher and that’s what we’re spoon-fed?
Well, that’s exactly how Kwanzaa got into the curriculum. You have double standards.
Go ahead and celebrate your African harvest while the people in the Horn of Africa are starving. I’m beginning to find this whole debate amusing. But since you mentioned you came from a political black power/Afro-centric/mom is a tough black preacher family, I get it.
But that is not what you said. You specifically said that articles about how Santa is forbidden but Kwanzaa is forcibly celebrated are easy to find. Please provide links to those articles.
Again, please provide information about students being forced to celebrate Kwanzaa.
And when I went to a public school, I belted out Handel’s “Messiah” and “Pie Jesu”. I remember when my Catholic choir teacher got a headache because they made him change the “Christmas Pageant” to “Holiday Pageant”.
Things are different.
My brother’s teacher read a Christmas Story in class (he’s in 5th grade) and then asked which kids believed in God. Only him and a kid named Timmy didn’t. He felt awkward, but I’m sure after a phone call from my mom she won’t do that again.
We’re not going to do this again: Where I say something, you say I said something else, then you keep repeating it like it’s true while monstro calls me a liar. If you didn’t understand what I said, I provided clarification. If you can’t understand yet, that’s on you. I’m not your kindergarten teacher and I refuse to entertain the likes of you again. “To force a smile” means you have to make yourself do it. Even seven and others pretending like Kwanzaa is 10x bigger than what it is is forcing a holiday to appear natural and widespread.
You stated this (please note, I am quoting your own post, your own words, with no changes):
You then stated (again, your own words):
None of which, it was pointed out, supported your original claim that schools are celebrating Kwanzaa but refusing to recognize Santa.
Now, if you made a mistake, and made a claim that you can’t back up, all you have to do is say “I mis-spoke, and I apologize. What I meant to say was” and then fill in what you meant to say.
Otherwise, you’re making claims that can’t be verified. And that’s not how things work around here, for the most part. Especially when the claim is about something that supposedly CAN be verified.
How no one is suggesting we remove kwanzaa from the curriculum got morphed into what you were saying is beyond me. But again, this is how you ‘debate’. You morph words and then repost the same thing over and over again, adding each time and telling me you know what I think and what I meant and what I mean. We did this in the judge/abuse thread. Not here. In about .5 seconds you’ll throw my family history at me again. :rolleyes:
I had a misplaced modifier/comma issue. I think you can figure it out.
I didn’t say “we ignore to____” or “we ignore and_____”.
<sigh> I am merely reposting your own words, using the quote function. I understand how that can be embarrassing for you. You made a statement that you have not, and will not, validate. Find those articles that you claim are easy to find.
As a reminder:
Play your game elsewhere.
Well, see, that’s not really how things work here. There’s no law that states that you, or anyone else other than the mods, can dictate who participates in what thread. If you’d prefer not to respond to posts that frustrate you or place you in uncomfortable situations, you can choose not to do so. There are even tools that you can use to facilitate that - one is called the “ignore” function. Another is simply to ignore posts you wish not to acknowledge.
Your statement
does one of several things:
- Implies that the schools that are banning Santa are at the same time celebrating Kwanzaa.
- States that schools are “banning” Santa (true, according to a few articles for which you’ve provided links), but that schools (other schools? the same schools?) are celebrating Kwanzaa (meaning that they teach it? discuss it? recognize it? how?). The implication of juxtaposing those two phrases is that schools are forcing children to not recognize Santa but forcing those students to participate in the celebration of a ritual you find ridiculous. Now, you may not have meant such an implication, but unfortunately, sloppy writing sometimes communicates things that we don’t mean.