Schools and Holidays

"...no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson, 1779

I always enjoy the morality spats in this country: the squeals about flag burning and film content and gay marriage. At the epicenter of these is the fight about the separation of church and state. I love this one especially. For many years protestant Christians have used the government at all levels as an extension of the practice of their religion, and as that becomes less and less appropriate with a diverse society many of them are increasingly upset about the schools becoming more secular. They put forth all manner of entertaining reasons to object to this: that secularism is a competing religion unto itself, that the founding fathers intended our nation to be a theocracy (read the truth here), that the majority gets to do whatever it wants, and my favorite: that God in government ("In God we trust (1956)", "Under God (1954)") is just a "civic religion" and doesn't hold any real meaning and yet would be a death knell to civilization if removed.

Now as much as I would love to write an essay taking on the entire concept, I'm limiting myself here to a brief discussion of the practical aspects because in reality these disagreements don't add up to much when it comes to real issues facing educators and students every day. They are an electoral distraction more than anything else.

Take a moment to consider the degree to which Christianity dominates our educational environment.

1. We are currently taking time off from school for "Winter Break." We call it Winter Break, but everybody can plainly see that it is "Christmas Break." Imagine if I were to propose that we have "Winter Break" around Hanukkah, just a couple of weeks earlier.
   
2. In April we will have "Spring Break," which is of course always adjacent to Easter weekend. Try moving it to center on Passover just a couple of weeks later.
3. Every student pledges allegiance to "one nation, under God" every morning
   
4. Since 2002, every school in Virginia must prominently display the motto "In God We Trust." This seems generic enough until you consider that not all of our students are religious, some who are are not monotheistic, and even some monotheistic religions have prohibitions about the depiction of the name of God.
   
5. Many official events that I have been to, typically department lunches and dinners, are initiated by a Christian prayer led by one of the people in the room who supervises all the others on the job.
   
6. The Board of Supervisors swearing-in ceremony this past Saturday was started with a benediction "in the name of Jesus Christ."
   

With that I hope that we've dispensed with the illusion that God has been eradicated from the public schools. The fact is that religion is a very strong, diverse and healthy part of our society and the public schools are no different from any other facet of life in that regard. Public schools should be a place where children can learn about different religions and profess their own. At the same time public schools must never promote one religion over another, or religion itself.

To help School Board members, Superintendents and educators with this balancing act, there are a number of helpful publications.

• US Department of Education, Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools
• National PTA's Parent's Guide to Religion in the Public Schools
• Anti-Defamation League, Religion in Public Schools
  
• First Amendment Center's Teachers Guide to Religion in the Public Schools, endorsed by:
• Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs
• National Association of Evangelicals
• Council on Islamic Education
• National Education Association
• Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
• and many other religious and secular organizations
  

This past week I received another, Guidelines on Religion in Public Schools, published by the Jewish Community Relations Council. It includes a very helpful calendar of religious, national and community holidays for the upcoming school year. It is remarkable to view, because there is a holiday nearly every week of the year, and some weeks have multiples.

When you hear someone bemoan the assault on Christianity in public schools, you're hearing the wailing of a privileged class as its presumed birthright to power is revoked. To wit, see a couple of recent posts by fellow Loudoun blogger Barbara Curtis, whose "Mommy Life" blog is very well read both locally and nationally. Her recent post "Public schools and religious freedom: Can one person make a difference?" is a case in point.

I am hearing from parent after parent and teacher after teacher that all it took was one parent complaining for a school principal to completely cave and put the kibosh on Christmas or Christmas music - even while allowing every other religious holiday (and Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday, btw, just something thrown into the mix to level the playing field) under the sun to be celebrated. We can have a picture of a Menorah but not of a Nativity.

I've heard these stories before. One parent complains and suddenly... no Santa! Non-Christian religions have the run of the place! So far each of them has turned out to be a trumped-up charge, third hand at best. But the underlying spirit of this post, insulting Kwanzaa specifically and any faith that isn't her own with her broad generalization of "every other religious holiday," is what really bothers me. Really Barbara? Did your school commemorate Diwali or Ramadan this year? Did they celebrate Wesak, which is the birthday of Buddha? Or the birthdays of Baha'ullah (Baha'i) or Guru Nana Dev (Sihk)?

To her credit, in a different post, called "Christmas shut out at Waterford Elementary School?" Barbara comes up with a sort-of first-hand account:

I have not seen anything about Christmas. And I’m not talking about candy canes and trees. I’m talking about something representing the true basis for the Christian holiday celebrated by a much larger percentage of the population than these other holidays.

We sat silently through the huge hoopla that is Halloween at Waterford School, even though that is a religious holiday we do not celebrate ourselves.

Is Christianity to be shut out of my son’s school completely? If so, this is religious bias and it is illegal.

This is from the text of a letter that Barbara sent to her son's principal, and I appreciate that she did take it up with the principal directly in addition to posting it publicly. If you have an issue with something at your child's school, that is definitely the right thing to do. Too many parents spread their complaint to everybody except the principal.

Nonetheless, I can't find any merit to Barbara's complaint. First, she talks about the "true basis" for Christmas. I wonder if Barbara feels that her child's public school teacher is a qualified religious instructor. Then she mentions that hers is the majority religion... all the more reason to understand that kids of every faith are already awash in Christmas, have ample opportunity to learn about it outside of school, and that the powerful majority should be extra careful of its influence.

In the next sentence she calls Halloween a religious holiday. This is bunk. The connection Barbara would try to make is to Samhain, an ancient Celtic harvest holiday roughly equivalent to Thanksgiving here in the US. Samhain is celebrated on October 31st by some earth-centered religious faiths, and as my pagan friends will attest it has nothing to do with Halloween, certainly not the power-rangers and candy corn variety of public schools.

In Barbara's mind, all of life is a battleground for the dominance of the one true religion. Whenever she's not winning, she's losing. But this nation and the proud Commonwealth of Virginia were founded in part on the principal that government cannot, should not, must not be the arbiter of faith. Where government and religion intertwine there is trouble. Where people of every faith and of no faith are free to do as they please, nobody loses. People of faith must be involved in government, but the government must be built and executed on their values and not their religion.

I opened with Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, I will close the same way:

Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time.

Merry Christmas.