No one has suggested that any job allows an an employee to ‘’“celebrate a holiday” whenever they want.’ We are not talking about some random employee taking off Arbor Day or The Marine Corps Birthday.
The issue is not that any employee can simply disappear from any job for any reason, the way that you are trying to make it appear. The issue is that there are holidays that are sufficiently important to some groups that if enough of them wish to celebrate, it simply makes sense for an employer to give them that day off rather than to foster resentment by demanding that they work it. That is how the nation got Christmas off. That tradition is simply being extended to other groups. Your fixation on the “80% absent” phrase and the horror of having an employer being forced to tolerate such behavior is distracting you from the actual discussion.
You need to read up on what Orthodox Jews can do on the Sabbath. You don’t need a full day to prepare anything - they’ve been doing this long enough that it’s pretty simple.
I don’t see the problem with letting individual districts come up with a schedule that works for them, assuming they are meeting their requirements for hours in the classroom.
Taking an extra couple of days off a year is not remotely comparable to taking one day a week off, so I’m not sure why D’Anconia finds my “no” answer to his question particularly relevant.
Basically the same here. In the school district I grew up in we had Jewish holidays off. Where my kids go to school they don’t. Different demographics. But every district has to have the same minimum amount of days. It is up to the districts to schedule those days.
Here in France we have Easter Monday off. also Ascension Thirsday, All Saints Day (although that generally falls on regular break time anyway), and apparently Good Friday is off too but only in some places due to historical oddities. Fat Tuesday is not a holiday, but little gets done anyway as kids get to go to school in costumes, play pranks and so forth - it’s our Halloween, essentially.
Pretty much, yeah. I don’t see that a handful of days off significantly impacts education or costs (and if they do it seems doable to add a school week at the tail end of the school year), while giving Muslims and Jews a sense that they’re not second-rate citizens and such seems like a good thing.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
The Jewish Sabbath starts at sundown, well past the end of the school day.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t you guys have school on Saturday mornings ? I’m jealous.
[QUOTE=Joker And The Thief] Eugene Kontorovich makes a convincing case that the only holidays that should be celebrated are Christian ones. His reasoning for this is that 1) it’s better to have religion in the public square than no religion, and 2) we can’t give equal status to every religion, because there are a multitude, and the best place to draw the line is Christianity.
[/QUOTE]
Point the second is silly. Yes, Christianity is demographically dominant on average. But minority religions often boast local majorities.
There is a dilution effect of a holiday vs a holy day.
For the most part Christianity can pull this off as it is seen as inclusive, the message of Jesus to come, so in such the Christian holy days are sharable. This is also due to the large %age of Christians in the population. However even in that there is some people who what to ‘put Christ back in Christmas’ and put it back to it’s roots as a more holy day less celebratory day. How are Muslims going to take everyone getting a day off for their special day for believers?
For such a small percentage that Muslims are, giving the day off could serve to push this day in the minds and hearts of the general population as a holiday which may in term be showing more disrespect for their holy day then allowing a excused absence. IDK
I do tend to take it that Muslims in general hold aspects of their religion in higher regard, such as requesting that the Koran be placed on the top shelf, and the ‘respect’ they show God at a higher level, mainly because their status compared to God is lower then in Christianity.
Many jobs. Have you never heard of “floating holidays?” I get three floating holidays per year.
I doubt most public school teachers below the college level get them, but certainly many colleges do give their employees floating holidays as part of their benefits. It’s for exactly this type of situation. You can use them for religious holidays that aren’t already part of the employer’s holiday calendar, or you can use them for a day that isn’t special in any way.
And to a lesser extent, even when a minority isn’t a local majority, it might be a local large minority. Where I teach I can remember 1 Muslim student I’ve had among hundreds of students. But about 10% of my students have been Jewish. It might make sense to have Yom Kippur be a workday, whereas it wouldn’t make sense to do the same thing for Eid. If the percentages were reversed, it’d make sense to have Eid be a workday, but not Yom Kippur.
I’m a Muslim from the NY metro area. I don’t think Muslims will feel disrespected by having the day off. I think it’s weird that you would wonder about that. I’m also not sure why you wrote respect: ‘respect’
Anyway, in my opinion, the decision makes sense for this area where accommodations have been made for years to allow students off, tests rescheduled, etc.
Hearing some who have taken the keep Christ in Christmas viewpoint and that these days are suppose to be holy days, I have to wonder how what I commonly take is a faith that stricter would feel about 1: non believers celebrating it, 2: the Americanized attitude that any day off = day to get drunk and party.
To be more inclusive of things like honor and reverence. The word respect that I came up with just did not seem the correct term that I wanted to use, but close enough that the meaning would come across.
When I was in second grade in New York they didn’t have Jewish holidays off yet. My parents, who were not observant in the least, sent me to school that year. Since like 80% of my class was Jewish absolutely nothing got done. A few years later they just gave up and gave us the holidays. Somewhere around 90% of my teachers were Jewish also, which would have made it worse.
Isn’t it better to extend the school year a day or two to make up for this rather than effectively shortchange kids by counting days where nothing gets done as instructional days?
No doubt it will for some families. However, religious holidays tend to be times when (a) extended families celebrate and/or worship together and (b) followers of the religion in question take time off work, both of which free up more adults for child-minding tasks. So followers of the religion in question will probably adapt pretty well to schools observing their religion’s holidays.
Many families in the same school systems who don’t follow that religion will be somewhat inconvenienced by the new holidays. However, that’s basically part of the price you pay for living in a diverse community where a majority or large minority of your neighbors practice a religion different from yours.
By “secular”, do you mean just “official government holiday when most parents get off work anyway”, because that will minimize the inconvenience to parents trying to juggle childcare requirements?
If not, then I don’t see the point of that stipulation. Having your child’s school close on a day when you have to work is equally inconvenient for parents, whether the occasion is a religious holiday for somebody else’s religion or an officially non-religious holiday.
Personally, I think it makes sense for school holiday schedules to take into account the prevailing customs of the local populations.
Fire people with an established record of religious observance for practicing their religion by taking the day off, and you’ll wind up with a nice lawsuit on your hands. And a justified one. Obviously they arrange this in advance. And since it happens every year it should be a surprise.
Any manager who’d refuse such a request without very, very good reasons should be fragged.
In any case, judging from the school across the street from me, kids get a lot more days off than their parents do. A few for religious holidays is a drop in the bucket, and you’d expect the non-observant parents to have backup already.
Very true. Though an interesting aspect of Muslim holidays is that they move through the (tropical) year much more than even the Christian “moveable feasts” like Easter or the Jewish holidays (or the secular “weekday” holidays like Thanksgiving or Mother’s Day, for that matter).
Muslim holidays occur about ten days earlier every year with respect to our standard calendar, completing a full cycle about every 30+ years, so there’s no such thing as a seasonal holiday among them. That’s probably going to take some time for many American non-Muslims to wrap their heads around.
It seems like there are two questions here? First, should Muslim students and teachers be allowed to take Muslim holidays off and be accommodated for them? The answer seems like it’s obviously yes. I don’t know that that’s particularly debatable.
The question about whether it should be a school holiday for everyone, though, seems like it would depend on the local demographics and the amount of disruption having the Muslim teachers and students gone would cause. If that makes any sense.