In my hometown, 3 students have sued the local school district for refusing permission for them to distribute invitations to a weekly religious event. Apparently, they also wanted to distribute youth Bibles as part of this effort.
According to the lawsuit…
The superintendent ruled against distribution saying “…we do have restrictions placed on us as a public school entity that prohibit the distribution of religious materials.”
The issue (AFAIK) does not seem to be one of school disruption…or interference with classroom procedures…but one of content.
Do the “restrictions” placed on the school for distributing religious materials extend to the students as well?
Given only the information in the linked article, I think the students have a legitimate case, and the school district is clearly erring on the wrong side of the policy. Too many school districts, when confronted with the problems that arise from compelled religious participation, unwisely and unfairly extend (for lack of a better term) church-state separation policies to voluntary, student-initiated religious exercise.
Like pldennison said. I particularly like the last sentence, which I think summarizes my views better than anything else I’ve read. Beagledave, it would seem that we are on the same wavelength this morning.
Yep. I don’t mean to suggest that there are lots of school districts out there with an anti-religious agenda (like some of my more conservative friends would claim)…I do think that there is a fair share of ignorance on this topic…and many schools are just taking the lazy route of “block any semblance of religious discussion”.
I do not think that it would be reasonable for this to be the case. Schools are not permitted to distribute religious materials because of the Constitutional rule that the government may not sponsor religious beliefs. Students obviously are not a part of the government, regardless of the fact that they are in a government institution.
The same is the case for school prayer; students are perfectly free to pray (even in groups) if they are following the rules of the school otherwise. The school may not organize or sponsor prayers (even student prayers).
These kids should be allowed to give out religious material if they so desire, and so should kids of other belief systems.
Stuidents are already distributing anti-religious material, in the MP3 files they share.
Although an atheist myself, I can’t see the problem with letting students distribute religious material. Constitutional prohibitions apply only to agents of the state, not the citizens. As long as the school itself is not sponsoring or supporting the event, they’re in the clear and placing this regulation on students is overstepping their bounds.
Yes, and God’ll get you for that. But even putting aside all hyperbole, the music marketed to teens is sold as rebellious and irreverent because that’s apparantly what teenagers like. Without putting a moral spin on it, any religious message passed around by a student faces competition from the much more effective marketing strategies of a Marilyn Manson or Britney Spears, or whatever flavours of the week will eventually replace them.
I’m an atheist, actually, so I don’t believe in God or Satan, but compared to the information already being swapped freely by modern teenagers, a bit of religion is relatively trivial and harmless and the school had no business interfering. They don’t have to support the ideas, but trying to block them was not appropriate.