I like that-it’s open to all…all Christians, that is. :rolleyes:
It’s “opt-out” if you don’t want to take the course during school hours, not “opt-in” if you do, and with 96% of the students taking the class, anyone daring to “opt-out” is likely in for some shunning.
Is this what people who want to eliminate the Dept. of Education have in mind when they talk about returning to “local control”-the right to discriminate against religions other than their own in the public school system?
I don’t think ED is heavily involved in setting curricula, so their relevance here isn’t clear to me.
My experience is restricted to DC charter schools, which are secular and have a greater share of minority students than the rest of the public schools. Is that atypical?
It’s not what I mean when I talk about that. You don’t need a department of education to enforce the 1st amendment in local schools. For instance, what role is the DoE playing in this particular case?
Right now the DOE isn’t doing anything at all, and I doubt that under the current Administration they are even considering doing anything. Here is a more comprehensive view of what’s going on from the FFRF website.
And lest there is any doubt that this goes beyond mere teaching Biblical history
and
This is nothing more than Evangelical Christian Sunday School.
Like the EPA, the DoE is an easy scapegoat for any issue of the day that people don’t like. Like many things federal, people, including politicians, somehow both underestimate and overestimate what the DoE has influence over.
I received catechism in public school in northern Maine in the mid-70’s - in like third or fourth grade. I didn’t even know what it was until I mentioned it to my parents. As in:
“Great potatoes mom. I love the lumps. So anyway, today in catechism …”
“In fucking what?”
“Uh … catechism? Third period? Right before recess?”
“They’re fucking teaching you goddamned motherfucking catechism? In fucking public school? Not on my goddamned watch! The cocksuckers.”
After that me and one other girl got to go sit out in the hall while the rest of the class continued to receive their religious training. I have no clue how long that went on up there. It may still be standard third period fare for all I know. And yes, I do recall a getting a little shit for being the weird kid who had to sit in the hall, but I was the new kid in town anyway so I had enough to worry about without having to identify the source of the shit-flinging, as it were.
In retrospect, there probably wasn’t that much swearing, but my mom’s potatoes were fucking awesome.
The solution for the school is pretty simple. Hold such classes AFTER regular hours and on a voluntary basis. IIRC, that’s OK with the caveat that if some other group wants to do something similar (Jewish or Moslem or Wicca), they have to be allowed to, also.
It’s probably hard for us “coastal elites” to understand, but there are parts of the country who just don’t buy into the whole modern interoperation of the Establishment Clause.
BTW, this is to some extent a peculiarly American phenomenon. In Canada, for instance, one can choose to send one’s kids to public schools where religion is part of the curriculum (depending on which province you live in). This is also common in many European countries. After all, many of them explicitly have Established Churches.
In a school district that thinks that what they are doing doesn’t discriminate against other religions because they are open to all Christians that believe that Jesus died for their sins, that Creationism is fact, and that men and dinosaurs frolicked together in perfect harmony, I doubt very much that other classes about the Jewish, Moslem or Wikkan faiths would ever see the light of day.
Actually, whether they have after school classes for Christians or not, they would be required to allow other religious groups to meet anyway. I suppose they might try and quash it “for budgetary reasons” or something, but the law is clear, even if it’s not so easily enforced.
I guess I just go back to the text of the Constitution and do not see how the Mercer County Board of Education is establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
No student is being forced to participate in these classes, nor is there punishment for professing atheism, Judaism, Islam, etc.
Clearly it is silly to be teaching children that Adam slid down the backs of dinosaurs, but, like most things, the solution is to get rid of the people responsible for this curriculum and not involve the all-powerful judiciary.
Really? They’re establishing that Christianity is the only religion that matters by teaching it that way in a tax-payer funded public school. You really can’t see that as a bit of slight against the establishment clause?