memo to the american left, especially in the south

[fox]

You know how we've been saying that we need to find a way to stop seeming (or, as some would have it, being) anti-religion, within the context of a liberal or at least progressive society?

This isn't it.  (Briefly:  in many communities in rural Virginia, there's a break in the school day when kids pop out for Bible study.  In the town that's the subject of the article, some parents who choose not to have their children participate want the school board to eliminate the period, and are -- unsurprisingly -- meeting with resistance.)

I mean to say.  Are the Bible classes funded out of the public school budget?  (No.)  Are the kids required to go?  (Nope.)  Then shouldn't a commitment to principles of religious tolerance dictate that the program be allowed to do its thing unmolested?

Okay, I'm sympathetic to the fact that kids who don't go to the Bible classes most of their classmates attend are liable to feel left out.  News flash:  kids who don't go to the _________ most of their classmates attend are liable to feel left out.  When I was in school, a bunch of kids (admittedly not a majority, but still) went to dancing school on Friday afternoons, and those who didn't felt like we were missing something.  By all accounts the dancing-school crowd hated every minute of it and we were lucky we didn't have to go, but that didn't change the fact that they were a group of which others of us weren't members.  (Another bunch of kids, with some overlap, went to Hebrew school two afternoons a week.  That's probably a better analogy with the Bible-study thing in this article; it wasn't all the Jewish kids who went to Hebrew school, but obviously nobody who wasn't Jewish went, because why would they?  And the kids who did had a community the rest of us couldn't be part of.)  It's just a fact of life.

What ought to happen, of course, is that the school should use the kids' time better who aren't going to the Bible classes.  It's not a free period for the teachers, after all.  The superintendent says "We don't participate or encourage participation" -- so far, so good -- but as for the kids who stay behind, doing art projects or remedial work, he says "[generally], new work is not started, because the majority would fall behind."

[headdesk]

Dear superintendent:  Or, those kids could be getting ahead.  Just a thought.  :-)

But now that I've been so reasonable from the left, a quick note to Jack Hinton, head (as the article tells us) of a group that funds and administers the classes, who says "We have a small core of a group philosophically opposed to any connection between religiosity and schools.  They're articulate and persuasive, but they are in the minority" -- that's as may be, sir, but they're also right, constitutionally speaking.  You may keep your weekday Bible classes, but don't try to actually connect them to the schools, please.  Thank you.

Comments

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

yeah, i did notice that here-have-some-kool-aid bit from the kid at the end. and i agree in principle that we don't need to help kids segregate themselves -- but the thing is, this middle-of-the-day church-school thing isn't illegal; how can you get, legally, from really wishing they wouldn't (which is where i am) to insisting they shouldn't be allowed (which is where the other parents in that community are), on legal grounds? if they're going to be Not Allowed, someone's going to have to get the loophole closed, you know what i'm saying?

[obsessed1.livejournal.com]

I get what you're saying. And I agree, too.

We also can't argue another's right to worship as invalid if it harms no one, not without first admiting that our own rights would have to be likewise invalid.

But the parents are also arguing that by throwing away this time on crayons and Special Ed that isn't necessary, the schools are harming their children and the education they are supposed to be receiving. And that is a valid point. If they wanted to bundle the kids off during lunch and have them eat while learning about the Bible, I would have less of a stance to argue from.

[datlowen.livejournal.com]

If you're going to do that kind of thing, which I don't object to on separation grounds (although I thikn that argument can be made), then it has to be done at the end of the day, not in the middle. This is effectively an extra-curricular, so what the hell is the school doing making tome for it in the middle of the day? At the end of the day it allows the kids to come home, instead of their current Hobson's choice of Jesus or crayons. This seems to bethe most reasonable solution, yes?

The fact that they're not doing it that way already suggests to me that this is exactly a recruiting scheme, and one that is implcitly encouraged by the schools which, of course, is unconstitutional.