It's ironic to me that the folks most likely to kvetch about all those worthless teachers and teachers unions are the ones who will then turn around and demand those teachers should be able to lead their students in prayer.
Let me say, as a parent and as a Christian, I don't want my daughter's teacher or her principal or her classmates leading her in prayer in school — including what someone else might consider "good Christian prayer" or else some watered-down pablum generic invocation. That's why we go to church on Sundays, not the local middle school cafeteria.
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This is unfortunately not implemented correctly in most school systems who do not allow prayer groups on school grounds, for example, because any student group requires a teacher advisor and a teacher can not be involved in leading a religious-affiliated group. So prayer groups are treated on par with gangs as unsanctioned.
+Shava Nerad Then pray after school? I don't see the problem here… school is where kids go to get a general education – the home and the church are where religious adults and children can go to worship. Also, why should there be any official groups at a school devoted to prayer? That doesn't seem to make any sense… no classroom should be devoted to religious matters at any time. If kids want to pray in groups, go outside and pray in groups! We don't pay taxes to support things like this, we pay taxes to support general learning (which just about everyone appreciates.)
Now, if someone harasses kids for praying outside that's not right, but that has nothing to do with the school unless they are somehow officially stopping them.. I've never heard of anything like that before, but obviously that infringes on some major freedoms.
beg to differ
http://www.edutopia.org/stw-student-stress-meditation-schools-research
We spend significant money on meditation in schools, which serves the same function stripped of denominational trappings.
These kids want to roll their own in community. WTF is wrong with that. They are, in fact, exercising a fundamental American freedom of religion.
Your prejudices are showing.
@Sheva, would you be ok with a Satanist group forming? That's a religion to some. If you aren't, then schools shouldn't have teacher led Christian groups either.
Yup, I'm fine with that, so long as they aren't breaking any laws and they're good neighbors. I've had some very interesting chats with philosophical satanists who aren't just in adolescent rebellion against their Christian upbringing, although that's pretty rare. They have chaplains in the armed forces among the pagan contingent, I think. I might advise them that the school administration is going to smack them around as potential terrorist and school shooters these days now, though. You can't get away with that kind of speech in a school environment these days. They are sending kids to actual served jail time for talking trash in video games after all, much less dressing in black and talking like philosophical nihilists…
This isn't a free country by much these days, and a school campus is not a free environment even when this was more of a free country than it has been since 9/11 and/or Columbine and all — but there are things that are just and things that are practical, and I would recommend against some expressions on the basis of pragmatic considerations, frankly. 😉 But I personally wouldn't take issue.
And what I'm saying is — the groups shouldn't be teacher led, but they should be allowed to be self-organized by students and held on campus.
I suspect you're making assumptions. I think you might be surprised regarding my own background, btw.
I am a Unitarian Universalist minister's kid from the general vicinity of the New England Transcendentalists (and live in Salem MA, the birthplace of the separation of church and state on this continent), a civil libertarian on religion, a small-'c' christian, a meditator, a co-founder of the Boston Tibetan Buddhist Center and the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, the MIT Pagan Student Group and the University of North Carolina pagan student group (which had some clever acronym that escapes me at the moment). I stand up for religious freedom, even when I do not strongly participate in the religion in question.
What, we're only supposed to stand up for the rights we enjoy, and not the other guy's? Isn't that the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the minority? How about equal rights? How about justice?
You can "throw this stuff back in my face" all day, love. I'll serve it back atcha.
+Shava Nerad I'm lost, what exactly are you a proponent for? If we are talking about having teachers lead religious things, then there is no end to the number of religions that can come up. That's an incredibly slippery slope. A student could literally make one up and force the schools to waste money supporting it (which in this case is time teachers have to spend with these groups.) After all, what's the difference between one religion and the next? They must all be equal in the eyes of government-funded institutions.
As for students forming their own groups – they can do this so far as I've seen. There were plenty of groups like this in my public High School, certainly. If they are using classrooms that would otherwise be used to practice general education this may be an issue, though, of course. The primary point of schools is to teach the standard curriculum. If some schools simply feel like not allowing any religious groups since it's a slippery slope to allow everyone access to classrooms and resources I think I can respect that as well.
I just don't see any reason why kids need to pray or worship their gods within groups in schools. This is simply not the purpose for schools. If it's not consuming resources or hurting anyone, then hey whatever – that's fine. If, however, people see potential issues with it, then so be it – don't allow it. We just have to be careful not to ostracize students of any belief (or lack thereof) directly.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, being against religion mixing into our schools does not make me prejudice, it makes me considerate. We cannot teach every religious notion ever conceived in our schools, it's not at all practical, so a line has to be drawn in order to protect students from both misinformation and a giant waste of time. Very few believe all religions are correct, and very few value knowledge of world religions, so obviously there is inevitable waste forcing kids to look into all of them. Conversely looking into a single religion is also wrong for obvious reasons – that's what churches are for.
Thus, the most elegant solution is simple: separate schools from religions. Now if the kids want to pray or practice their religion on the lawn, and they aren't consuming resources or distracting others from their studies, then I think that's great. That is an expression of freedom – it's downright American. If that's what you're on about, I agree with you for the time being. That's simply an exercise in extra-curricular interests. It's just as slippery a slope to deny that as anything else I've mentioned.
I’m confused. What does meditation have to do with religion? I have a very good friend who meditates every day, and she’s an Atheist.
Everyone can pray in school. They’ve always been able to. And teacher/admin. led prayer was not the rule everywhere and in every time. During my grade school years, back in The Dark Ages, we had one teacher who led prayers, The Lord’s Prayer,” in class (always saying, “Now, you Protestants, you just keep going. You don’t have to end the prayer with the rest of us.”)
If prayer must be done in a “club” setting, IMO, it renders it meaningless.
@Ellie, there is a thread of thought among some that any practices drawn from religious sources are, still, religious. Thus, certain exercise and stretching routines (yoga) and relaxation / concentration exercises (meditation) are seen as tainted in some associative and/or spiritual fashion. I don’t buy it myself, but there it is.
+Shava Nerad I disagree that meditation, as described, is anything like "prayer in schools". It's not only divorced from denominational content, but it's divorced of religious content as well, except insofar as relaxation exercises are religious.
To restate +Trevor Brown a little differently, I have no problem with kids choosing to pray together, in whatever time they have outside of the classroom. And I have no problem with any individual kids praying inside the classroom on their own, as long as they don't disturb their neighbors. But prayer with students being led by, or sponsored by, government officials (teachers, principals, administration), I do have a problem with.
Right, and what I said was that this is allowed — kids praying together — but it's badly implemented in many schools.
DID YOU READ WHAT I SAID FOR CONTENT? please re-read it?
I said: many schools insist that any school activity have a teacher-advisor. Since prayer groups can not have teacher advisors, they can't be official and are treated as non-sanctioned "illegal" groups, like street gang activity — they are harassed and broken up when they are found meeting on the school grounds. Is that more clear? Since they are without advisors and student-run, they are treated like outlaws. It's a catch-22.
And the meditation groups are not "devoid" of religious trappings — as a former yoga therapist, I have to think most people think this because they are not literate in south Asian symbology. The children are taught mudra and asana straight out of yoga traditions, often with the visualizations from those traditions. The ideas from Buddhist psychology are used in some cases. These are religious ideas. Christian clergy know this and feel somewhat resentful when they feel like a totally secularized "moment of silent prayer" is forbidden, and now tax dollars are going into actively teaching south Asian traditions.
Prayer is religious contemplative "technology." Walking a labyrinth, counting beads — whether a rosary or a mala, the Sufi dances of peace, seated prayer to Mary or sitting Za-zen — all of these are prayer. Although some may up alpha and some may up theta brainwaves, cognitive scientists have mapped the kinds of effects of these traditions in the brain of most of these traditions — they are developed to produce a particular brain state.
Whether you want to view this as "tuning into God" or secularly centering and reducing the noise in the brain, it hardly matters to me. It improves the quality of life of people who follow these practices. Your motivations don't make a bit of difference, on an individual basis, although on a societal basis it can make a huge difference — that is an issue we deal with every day.
But how people deal with religion and their neighbors seems to be an issue of civics as much as religion, isn't it? It's got f*-all little to do with children and prayer before an exam.
"We who are about to die, salute you," (or whatever message appeals to you) before an exam in good company can make a huge difference to the adolescent brain. Why deny the 15 minutes of official quiet retreat in an official quiet room to a group of students on their own recognizance, without hassling them?
+Shava Nerad Firstly, I apologize about spelling your name incorrectly. Phone screen was small. Secondly, I didn't make any assumptions about you, but you stating your thoughts that I did are making some about me.
I fully agree that students should be allowed to form groups as they wish. I'm also not naive enough to think that everyone is OK with every religion, or that various groups would even be tolerant of each other. With that in mind, it's in the best interest of ALL students, to take the activity (which is not school sponsored) elsewhere. Not to mention what each meeting may consist of. What if a Christian group asked to bring wine (or just brought it?) That's a clear rule violation that you couldn't stop without being bias against the religion itself. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
+Brian Coram That's what's called a "straw man" — that argument about the wine.
Communion is administered by priests or other clergy, generally. What we are talking about is kids getting together for peer-led prayer.
Stop complicating the issue. We're not talking about complicated ritual, sacrificing small animals, intoxicants, proselytizing, drums and cymbals, or whatever — at most we are talking about the same kind of privacy and space the model rocket club gets to get together for their meetings — probably with less noise and bad smells.
Minors in school are already restricted from a whole truckload of privileges that their adult counterparts are allowed in a zillion free contexts — they are not allowed pocket knives, cleaning chemicals, political tracts, and so on. These things are not at issue. What is issue here is assembly that is already guaranteed to them under current rulings but is not being allowed to them by some administrations.
If you actually read the graphic or meme or whatever it is you wish to call it at the head of this discussion — it actually details that I am in the right here — these kids are already allowed, and have never been disallowed, these rights that you are trying to tell me they should be disallowed.
You are in the wrong according to the law. You are the sort of trog that these school principals are who strip these kids of their rights in the interest of skipping controversy rather than complying with the law.
Those people are no better than George Wallace standing in the door of a school house door with uniformed men, swearing to oppose laws integrating schools because it was controversial.
Nor are you. Stand down. This decision was made long since. It is peacefully implemented in many school systems, and it's an issue of justice. You are not I think authorized to wear robes of the court, are you?
As a side note, it's freaking AMAZING the people you find wanting to restrict people's rights among liberals.
It all depends whose rights, now, doesn't it?
This is why conservatives (real thoughtful conservatives) dismiss most modern liberals as hypocritical ninnies. We look just as much like fools to them as we see all the talk-radio-conservative ninnies from our point of view.
There's this thing about the speck in the other guy's eye and the beam in our own? We're not good at looking in the mirror, not at all.
+Shava Nerad I would certainly disagree vehemently with any harassment and breaking up of any informal, student-led groups, whether for prayer, chess, or simple social gathering. I'm not aware of any cases of that sort happening (which doesn't mean they haven't), but they seem fraught with potential for law suits from any number of conservative legal groups as well as the ACLU.
I don't necessarily have a problem with quiet times. Quiet classrooms are a bit more problematic, just from a maintenance of school order perspective. It's not clear to me, though, that not having that kind of space is an imposition or prevention of prayer; the "meet at the flagpole" movement seems to have worked just fine.
'Prayer is religious contemplative "technology."' I think if you cast the terminology out widely enough, then, yes, all sorts of things can be considered prayer. But it sounds like you're also saying that any sort of "contemplative 'technology'" or process is, itself, prayer, which I would disagree with.
Here's a good background on the state of the law btw:
http://archive.adl.org/presrele/cvlrt_32/2430_32.asp
"It's complicated."
The issue isn't with getting a currently used classroom to be quiet but to get the same ad hoc space that any other student activity would be able to reserve to be available to an activity without a teacher advisor — do you see? A group shouldn't have to meet at the flagpole in a blizzard. Not very contemplative. De facto discrimination.
As far as your contemplative tech comment, modern divinity school experts tend to disagree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_prayer#Ongoing_debate
Shava Nerad with all this whining about the poor oppressed christianists not being able to have special privileges in school, would you stand up and support a Secular Student Alliance in your local school. Or any school? Since SSA's have the same exact problem as the poor oppressed christianists in not being able to gain teacher support for club activities in public schools.
Sure why not? I am not doing this for Christian kids. That's your assumption. I would be happy if they were Buddhist, humanist, secularist, atheist, neopagan, or spaghetti monsterian. Makes not a bit of difference to me so long as the kids and the school district carried through on supporting their civil liberties. That was my point above — not Christian rights but equal rights and actually granted according to current legal decisions that have already been granted.
Look, today a great deal is being made of the civil rights movement. In 1963, you would think blacks could not register to vote in a few states in the south by law. Fact is, it was legal for a black person to register to vote and vote in any election for nearly a century by then. But on a practical basis, voter registration meant taking your life in your hands if you were black. Exercising your legal rights could get you killed.
Jim Crow trumped any explicit rule of law.
Now what you people are telling me is this: you are not comfortable with a class of persons, those being people of faith, and so due to your discomfort, you are willing to move beyond the law and strip these people of rights the courts have granted them after long deliberation.
This puts you in the same position as the people supporting Jim Crow. You are propping up extra-judicial acts of civil rights circumvention because of your personal discomfort with a class of persons.
What good liberal folks you are! You think everyone deserves equal rights as long as they are enough like you for you to trust them, perhaps? Or not like your parents or whoever turned you off Christians?
Don't impose that damage on society at large. You'd think less if it were a misogynist hating all women because off family history with women. If you are an ex-Catholic, vilifying religion in society is no different. It's a mistake of scale into prejudice, even bigotry.
Magnifying your pain of betrayal into society won't heal your pain.
And I wasn't the person who hurt you. I am defending kids who never felt that kind of hurt or betrayal from their faith of origin, for whom it is not and may never be a lie.
That's not a bad thing — it can be beautiful. And the law says it is their right.
Whether it makes you angry, or jealous, or worried, or whatever negative feelings arise — it is their legal right.
And by opposing it, you simply reveal a shadow. The law supports them already. You illustrate why some principals likely try to circumvent the law.
This is an interesting topic considering that many things are banned from schools. Smoking is banned, as a key example, because it can have a bad influence on health. I would imagine cults are also banned, especially the kind that plans to convert as many as possible before a mass suicide (as one of the most drastic examples.)
There are plenty of prayer groups that I wouldn't mind at all knowing exist, but what about a extremist group of evangelists labeling themselves as a prayer group? This is a gray area… especially if they start telling other kids they are going to hell unless they change the way they live their lives. Kids are impressionable, that's not appropriate for them to hear. I would label that a threat.
I don't think any of us can simply state in black and white what is the best course of action for all situations because of this labeling criteria vs. reality.
So this is very interesting… I thought we could hammer this out, but now it seems quite a mistake to think that way. I think groups should be assessed on an individual basis. The school should have the authority to approve or disapprove of what takes place on school grounds so long as they have good reasons they display publicly that coincide with solid rules set in place. That seems to be where I am resting with this discussion.
It's not a perfect system, but it's either that or we remove all rules from schools (swearing, smoking, verbal abuse, etc.) In essence, schools are not a place to demonstrate freedom, so much as they are a place to learn from a standard curriculum.
Oh, and obviously zero religious activities should be participated in by government-funded employees. Anything controversial should be avoided. This goes for a game club even, if the teacher takes a side in a ongoing game that splits up students he or she is going to cause issues. Officials should simply remain as neutral as possible to their students – this promotes free thinking.
_ schools are not a place to demonstrate freedom, so much as they are a place to learn from a standard curriculum._
Please go read Democracy and Education, by John Dewey.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/852/852-h/852-h.htm
Your philosophy is actually less than a half century old, and extremely hazardous to a free society not to mention a competitive economy.
We are now turning out the sort of students we used to mock Japan for turning out — uncreative timid kids who won't do anything that is not spoonfed to them. We've managed to destroy in about one generation of teaching-to-the-test what was the kernal of the American character — entrepreneurial, inventive, and competitive. Just in time for a truly global marketplace.
A number of my friends at MIT are noting that the kids they are finding who are best adapted to exploratory engineering and science today are often either the homeschoolers or the kids who survived the worst backgrounds intact, where they had to adapt daily. The helicopter parented, standard test, conforming kids are turning out pretty much unable to think out of the box once they get past high school.
+Shava Nerad I never said the current curriculum worked, In fact I was one of those students that both hated school and did poorly in it. After leaving I immediately got an excellent job I am good at despite all the years of bad grades, too. The system is definitely in need of improvement, but I don't think the issue is stemming from not having enough prayer groups or extra-curricular activities. Rather, I think the entire methodology is wrong. This is a separate discussion.
Thank you for your judgement, though, it's good to know the type of person I am speaking with. You seem to not be above taking my words out of context and stretching them for your own personal interests (i.e. claiming my philosophy, which you have idea idea about, is half a century old, and that my idealogy, which you also have very little idea about, is hazardous to our society.)
In my opinion it's assumptions like that which are most poisonous to our society. Arrogance and ignorance are indeed some of the most effective ways to destroy the free flow of information.
Shava Nerad at this point I am not sure if you are a poe or a standard troll.
I do applaud your referencing noted socialist and atheist John Dewey to promote the christianist dominate privilege, well done. Much like quoting Valerie Solanas to promote male dominate privilege, or MLK to promote white dominate privilege (oops, FOX News is already doing the last bit).
I also find it amusing that you fail to acknowledge that the reason that many of the schools and school districts that have banned non-academic student groups is solely because they didn’t want Student Atheist Alliance or Gay/Straight Alliance groups in their schools in the first place, so the solution to those problems was to ban all non-academic student groups. So, perhaps instead of howling about the poor christianists not being unable to have their groups to pray at people and bully them, you need to go out and deal with the real problem, christianist hated of atheists and the LGBT community.
Bonus points on your zig to lament of the lack of Dewey promoted progressive education, though sadly such education style started dying the day the Soviets launched Sputnik. The current teach to the test system is just the final nail in the coffin of a progressive education in the drive to create a factory farm education that is nothing more than education theatre to go along with our security theatre.
Stan, you are mistaken about Dewey, I think entirely:
"One reason why personally I think it fitting to use the word "God" to denote that uniting of the ideal and actual which has been spoken of, lies in the fact that aggressive atheism seems to me to have something in common with traditional supernaturalism. I do not mean merely that the former is mainly so negative that it fails to give positive direction to thought, though that fact is pertinent. What I have in mind especially is the exclusive preoccupation of both militant atheism and supernaturalism with man in isolation."
That and much more at http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/dewey.html
Nice attempt at character assassination. But you should try and do your research first.
And again, it's a mistake to pigeonhole me as any kind of "christianist [sic] dominist." I have worked to secure the rights of neopagan and Buddhists more than protestant kids (because, you are absolutely right, Christians enjoy far more privileges than many other people in this country), although I have also done some work for protestant kids too. Your run of the mill Christian prayer-in-the-school types would likely be taken aback by my advocacy for the right of the MIT Pagan Student Group's use of the MIT Chapel for Samhain rituals, which brought me in direct conflict with the Southern Baptist chaplain for campus.
I wish you'd read what I wrote earlier instead of obsessing on your own agendas. I am in favor of egalitarian religious liberties, and I have acted on that since the early 80s, not just "trolled" web forums. I am an operative in this area, not just a person who bitches about what they think the world should be like — I go out and make sure that people behave according to the laws and, as MLK used to say, "God loves Justice." We tend to get folks in the administration of schools and universities to see reason as these places to see reason — which is why you don't see court cases. Court cases happen when people are such asshats that they can't look at a situation and see reason without being taken to court.
Think about that. The law is pretty plain. If you sit down and make a reasonable case, then why in the world would a school administration make you take them to court? It's sort of like being a mediator or advocate. Nearly any problem is better negotiated outside of a courtroom.
Yes, we wouldn't want anyone to be guilty of character assassination in this thread… ::rolls eyes::
+Stan Pedzick That was an excellent point about the hatred being spread by Christians against Atheists and the LGBT community. I think this is definitely a major concern to schools, and if they allow all of these clubs to co-exist, there can often be contraversy. I had all three at my own school years ago, but luckily the Christians were accepting of these groups (unlike many other parts of the country.)
Obviously the controversy may be good to have for these groups potentially, but at the same time it's a potential lawsuit for schools and it's also a major distraction from the studies of the students. These are important topics in the world, but they aren't the only topics – and young men and women, as well as children, are often prone to becoming too wrapped up in these distractions. If they are omitted from school, school becomes a more neutral environment to learn in.
Shava Nerad
Sweet!
A quote war!
"We are a people of many races, many faiths, creeds, and religions. I do not think that the men who made the Constitution forbade the establishment of a State church because they were opposed to religion. They knew that the introduction of religious differences into American life would undermine the democratic foundations of this country.
What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools."
The quote in question is: Testimony at Board of Education hearing (opposing "released time" for religious
instruction), New York Times, November 14, 1940
So the question is pertinent, conceivably, if you consider that a student run activity takes students away from class time — which presumably it would not — or away from campus — which pretty much by definition it would not.
So, a religious activity divides students if the students meet in private more than, say, an African-American student society, or an Honor Society, or an athletics club, or a glee club? How so? Other than that you don't approve of the activity that they are engaging in more than, say, the glee club, the ethnic group, the athletics group, and so on?
By qualification on that quote: this was testimony by an interested layperson at a hearing — it was not a part of the decision nor was it commentary on the decision. It has nothing to do with the law as formulated at all. Anyone can come and testify that they oppose a law because the Martians dislike it, and anyone can transcribe the testimony. It doesn't make it part of the law later, only the law is the law.
The decision in question in that case was teacher led prayer. Not student peer group prayer which has since been deemed legal. As the above graphic notes. It's legal for Christian prayer. It's legal for Hindu yoga meditation sangha. It's legal for Muslim prayer facing Mecca as it falls during the school day. It's legal for Jewish kids who meet to share passover food during pesach, reciting special prayers. Or Hindu kids sharing prasad during Diwali. Or anyone else, and asking for private space actually preserves the community from having to deal with intrusion issues that you seem to worry about — isn't it better, according to your worries, if the Hindu kids grab a conference room for their Diwali feast than doing this in the middle of the cafeteria where it might harsh on the Christian[ist dominists]? Let everyone celebrate their cultures, including their religious traditions, without the appearance of proselytizing or intrusion on the community, just let them have their own space for their celebrations and prayer when it comes up. It isn't any more imposition than having a bit of space for any other student activity.
Ok, you’ve finally got me to say this – religious beliefs should end at the end of one’s fingertips. This is the position I have held for many years and I still feel it makes the most sense.
The founders of this nation more often spoke of “freedom of conscience” when talking about religion, meaning keeping government out of our brain. No one to tell us what we must or must not believe. And it worked for many years (although not perfectly). They would, however, mostly be affronted by the notion that citizens would, outside of a partisan event like a church service, be ‘praying’ all over the place. Washington and Jefferson particularly found ostentatious religious displays to be offensive. (Don’t have the quote book near me now.)
If students want or feel the need to pray on school grounds or to gather in small groups to pray, then I say fine. They shouldn’t be harassed, but they shouldn’t be sponsored by the school either. There are churches that sponsor just such groups, and that’s where I believe they should be. How about the modesty of keeping those beliefs to oneself? I believe Jesus said just the same about the priest class.
Also, just to make this very clear, your assumptions about non-believers are, at best, cliche.
I am an atheist and none of your comments apply to me. Religion, like many hierarchical organizations, has done its best to vilify itself, I don’t need to help it. I have seen it hurt people on both a micro and macro level; I have seen many who have received help. I seek to hold it accountable for its wrongs as I would any other entity. (With limited success for reasons too many to list here.) I am in no pain because of my disbelief, and I suggest that you give respect to non-believers to see them as they are, and not just as you would portray them.
+Shava Nerad I think you misread the comment. I said I am for any student led activity. That does not involve a school at all. I think it wise for a school to remain uninvolved as it prevents what you deem conplicating an issue. If a Christian group is allowed, so is a Satanist group. Each has their rituals. Neither should be denied. If that includes animal sacrifice, then by allowing one, you are allowing all (which is thd same, but more extreme example of the wine). I am not complicating the issue. It is already a complicated issue.
You may wish to call it a straw man argument, but the fact remains that opening the doors to a majority religion includes opening them to all religions. While you or I may be fine with that, the same cannot be said for all. That is my point. It's best for all students to keep religion, any religion, out of their classrooms.
+Brian Coram While much of what you say is true (in your basic point), I think the school authorities would be within reasonable rights to restrict animal sacrifice, use of intoxicants, carrying of bladed weapons, etc. as part of religious ritual, without being specifically biased against any one religion, since it meets a compelling state need.
And that compelling state need is what gets in the way of letting kids have their own private space for religious get-togethers, as kids in schools (at least through high schools) aren't generally allowed to be on their own in a classroom, etc. space, which the requires a school employee to supervise, which then leads to entanglement. (To be fair, I could see an argument that supervision can be neutral.)
+Dave Hill that would be reasonable for a school to do. It would then be equally reasonable for an offended person to bring up a lawsuit based on that action.
I'm in no way saying it makes sense, I'm saying it's a likely possibility. Easy way to avoid such a frivolous lawsuit? No religious activity shall be school sanctioned. Problem solved. That's the only point of this I intended to address.
That's not to say that students can't or shouldn't form groups. They should. It just may mean a different meeting place unless the school is open to all possibilities (which I don't think is realistically considered. It may not be likely, but any example presented I reasonably possible although a sacrifice in my opinion would be considered extreme).
Here, I'm 100% with +Dave Hill — specific issues of action can be restricted (use of intoxicants or edged weapons or whatever), and a staff member can supervise but not assist, just as they could supervise any other student activity. This allows equal but unimposed activity, that does not interfere with academics, integrated with the life of the student, as is natural to the cultural flow of the day, rather than treating religion as though it were some alien thing that was meant to be kept underground and shameful — using France as an example of where that leads.
Religion is an aspect of human culture as old as human language, I suspect. Driving it into the underground leads to horrible pathologies. The Soviets gave this a try, and it lead to bad things in the 'stans that we are paying for today, for example (that's where part of my family is from).
State secularism very easily falls into state fundamentalist atheism, which leads to horrible conflicts between entrenched people of faith and "atheists with crowbars" and this is the last thing we need to get into in this country — it led to horrible whiplash in Central Asia, and turned what used to be an area with a lot of religious tolerance to an area vulnerable to the sort of Wahabi-ist and Taliban and what-not fundie paranoia you see today.
Oddly, you rarely see the historical trace of how the region got so messed up that way. My mother's mother's family were Bukharan Jews — the Jews of Central Asia who stayed in the region after the Babylonian Exile. They lived peaceably with Islam for the whole history of the religion until the Soviets came in. It's worth reading about how that turned out. The anti-Semitism in the region came in with the Russians, the anti-Christian notions came in with the Russians/British "Great Game" years, particularly, even earlier than the Soviets. Gradually Islam in Central Asia became isolationist and nationalist or regionalist, as the great powers fought proxy wars and treated the people of faith like idiots for their professed traditions — while at the same time, cynically playing Sunni against Shi'itti faction (we generally use Shi'a because of the pronounciation of the more proper "Shi'itti" in English 😉
But those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Central Asia was tolerant because they believed strongly in pluralism at least on the basis of "the people of the book" — the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were meant to live side by side. Hinduism and Buddhism, maybe not so much, nor the Jains and Zoroastrians and minority sects. And every so often the Sufis or someone would be out of favor and declared heretics by some other sect and then that's no good. Or someone would decide that the Christians were trying to convert Muslim kids which was, after all, a capital offense — not a perfectly liberal system, but better than today. Tolerant, not liberal.
This country, on the other hand, is supposed to be a liberal democracy, but we are moving in the other direction. We are moving away from our liberal principals — and I don't mean like "liberal politics" but I mean like "civil liberties" vs "despotic" — liberal like "the free world" vs "those who hate our freedoms." It seems like because we feel we are under siege from a poor economy and hard times, we are giving up our freedoms and the things that make us what we are as a great country one by one, and saying that these things we are doing are returning to some values we used to have in some non-existent time.
We were never a country of all-one-people. As early as colonial times, we were deciding that the plurality of religions was something we were going to live with in community by certain measures — that we would allow many churches, synagogues, public festivals of many faiths. That we would allow public expression of religion in dress and holiday observance and work holidays and many other ways. We would just not pay for it with government funds, for any specific established religion.
And if you didn't know — that principle grew out of the Salem witch trials, when a puritan judge used his Christian judgement to condemn a score of innocent people to death based on his religious judgement of the evidence, and months later one of the girls who testified confessed — as a key witness — of her perjory.
He spent the rest of his life campaigning for the separation of church and state as a result, so that religious judgement could not cloud secular rulings.
At the time we were still English colonies under the Church of England even though many colonists came from other countries and backgrounds. So it was a reform to have the church of the community funded by taxes but the minister called by the community by democratic vote of the parish by concensus, according to what kind of minister they wanted. A "congregational church." When a movement swept through New England that was more liberal and mystical which, among other things, posited that children shouldn't be required to recite creeds about the trinity they couldn't understand as mysteries until perhaps they were adults, there was a schism in the New England congregational churches between those who stuck to chatechizing kids on the Nicene creed and those who were less dogmatic — mocked by their more conservative peers as "Unitarian Congregationalists" vs "Trinitarian Congregationalists" — now just Unitarians.
These Unitarians bore the American Transcendentalist movement — Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau and others — who were strong free-thinking types who brought the first eastern texts into popular circulation in English. The Tao Te Ching, the various Sutras, the Mahabaratha, the works of Confucious — not as curiosities but as works of equal prophecy and wisdom to the testaments of Judao-Christian tradition.
We have a proud inheritance in this country of religious pluralism. I am very reluctant to see us give it up by throwing a fire blanket over it labeled "secularism" and smothering it. It doesn't have to go that route. It's lazy and un-neighborly, and borne of people who don't care to deal with the people who live next door.
If we can't learn to live with our neighbors we have much larger issues than kids praying quietly, separately, in school. This is a canary in a coal mine, much like the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, the endangered species, the endangered ecology, is our own.
This is a little like saying "some people find women going unveiled in public unreasonable, and might sue, so we feel all women should go in burquas from now on to avoid frivolous lawsuits in the interest of avoiding us having to go to court, not because legally women have to go veiled but because we don't want the expense of supporting their legal rights."
+Shava Nerad Once again you fail to understand that as it currently stands, there is nothing stopping kids from quietly praying in school.
No one has any issue with that.
SCotUS has repeatedly stated as much.
The problem becomes when a minority group comes along and does not get the same level of support or as a dominate group. The problem has always come from the Dominate Group (e.g. Christianity) deciding that it will not allow a GSA or SAA in a school, or not being able to find a sponsor for such groups. So, the schools response is not to allow any non-academic groups, an easy solution to a massive problem.
Do you only allow groups that fall in line with the school administration’s beliefs? Are only majority beliefs to allowed in the public buildings? Just as you stated about how horrible, and un-neighborly it would be for people not to be able to deal with their neighbors next door when the religious want special privileges for themselves that they more than willingly deny to their “neighbors”.
+Shava Nerad First of all, kids have almost no legal rights, secondly, they have even less legal rights in school.
Burqas is a false argument.
If you used your logic, kids should be allowed to come to school armed, since they have the right to bear arms.
Shava,
I have trouble understanding why it’s so important for students to have a school approved religious group. I am not looking for religion to go underground. I go many days/weeks without ever mentioning to anyone that I am an atheist, and yet I don’t cease to be one because it has not been uttered. With all the other things we have to be concerned about in schools, aren’t there more important ones than sponsored prayer groups on campus? There are many other venues where that it so much more appropriate. This is one thing on which we’ll just have agree to disagree.
However, I am much more concerned on your revisionist history. Firstly, though Muslims do consider Jews and Christians as ‘brothers of the book’, in many instances of history that gave those people only a slightly better life. When you look at the lives of these ‘brothers’ you find that most were not accorded full citizenship (they were only allowed certain jobs or professions) and were not allowed to worship in the open like Muslims were. It was a better deal than dead, but it wasn’t living in a plurality.
Also, no one living in the Salem Village was anything but a Puritan. They were adamantly opposed to the Church of England, and did not allow anyone not a member of their church to live in their village. They allowed for no decorations or holidays (they had laws suppressing Christmas until 1861 and continued to call it an abomination long after that). They were the antithesis of a plural society. Though I’m not sure which Judge you are referring to, when you consider that we didn’t start to fight for independence until almost 80 years later, and our constitution wasn’t ratified for nearly 100, I doubt how effect much his words had.
There were other colonies that allowed for freedom of religious belief, but they were in the minority. It’s one of the ironies of our freedoms in the US that most of the original folks who came here to start new lives wanted to created a more tightly religiously-controlled society than the one they left. They were looking for freedom to practice their religion, but not to allow others into their midst. Eight of the original 13 colonies had official churches and would persecute and/or prosecute those that practiced or proselytized for other sects.
+Stan Pedzick What I'm saying is this: People can't sue because they are offended that children in school are carrying out their legal rights.
If they sue because a child in school carried a gun, they would be within their rights.
If they sue because a three children go quietly into an unused classroom and lay out prayer mats oriented toward Mecca and pray between classes once a day, in a non-disruptive way, then they are full of crap, because these children have that right, established legally.
That suit is just like suing to say young women should not be able to take shop because girls are not supposed to take shop because they are girls and might get hurt by the big bad machines. Or that black kids can't swim in the pool because "our kids" have to swim in it.
It's a suit denying kids rights they have been granted by law because some retrograde bigot in the community thinks they can override civil rights law by suit.
Is that more clear?
And children do not have the right to bear arms on school grounds — no one has the rights to bear arms on school grounds except licensed security guards and officers of the peace — why do you keep bringing up these incredibly spurious arguments?
Children do not have those rights.
They do have the right to exercise religious expression on school grounds.
That's the difference we are discussing. It's very simple and specific.
They do not have the right to drugs, knives, or various things at school by law.
They have the right to religious expression BY ESTABLISHED LAW at school.
How much clearer can it be?
You just are not hearing what we are saying. The law is not in question. It's been established for many years.
+Shava Nerad "They do have the right to exercise religious expression on school grounds"
The question is, what bounds are on that exercise? We all seem to agree (at least I do) that private social groups, as long as they don't interfere with the function of the school (as is true with any other private groups) are okay.
And we all seem to agree that the officially sponsored (with a regular classroom meeting place, a page in the yearbook, perhaps during-school actiities) student religious groups are not okay — certainly if everyone is allowed to form such groups as desired, that might even things out, but that becomes problematic.
So the question becomes, does any school involvement (other than being on school property) constitute a sponsorship that we want to avoid? Is allowing the Co-Eds for Christ or the Juniors for Jewishness or the Senior Shiva Club to have a room with a teacher there to make sure they're not vandalizing it an action too far?
Well, see that's the issue — asking kids to just gather around the flagpole at noon is an issue when the activity involves laying out prayer mats — in the snow at 20 degrees below zero. And asking the kids to lay out prayer mats in a corner of the cafeteria for Muslim prayer is not going to go over well in a lot of schools these days because of the political climate. So you have an issue of free expression without harassment where the easiest answer would be to allow the kids to have private space whether supervised or not.
It seems to me that religious groups are at a low likelihood of vandalizing school property and such but I can understand how schools might be wary of the privilege being abused by people claiming religious status in order to go unsupervised.
When I was a kid, a lot of high school extra-curricular activities — including the model rocket and airplane club of which (of course, being the only girl) I was the secretary, were without adults present most of the time. I imagine someone easily might have put an eye out, but somehow, even handling significant amounts of explosives, we managed. 😉
But today we infantilize the kids. No pocket knives, no skinned knees, no field trips, no risks. It's a dangerous world because we scare the bejeesus out of ourselves disproportionately to the statistics. (As an example, you are more likely to be killed by the furniture in your house than by a terrorist. This is not reflected in the federal budget.)
We let our adrenal glands run our lives far more than our brains. And that puts us in far more danger than any risk of real conflict, suit, or actual worldly danger.
We'd rather spend time arguing on the internet than dealing with the real problems in the world by going out into our communities a few nights a month and meeting our neighbors and figuring out how to make the schools actually work well for more kids. And that's a real pity.
+Shava Nerad I confess I don't know how Muslim kids currently deal with prayer mats. It seems to me that would be (as in the workplace) a required accommodation.
It is a required accommodation according to the law. However to "protect" the Muslim kids from exposure to nastiness from other kids, it would be considered that they would need private space; private space would have to be supervised; supervision implies staff time implies school sanctioned religious activity…
Well, you get the idea…
So since it's required, it can't happen.
I'd like to see some real-world cases of this particular conflict (Muslim students in schools that have asked for accommodations to pray).
You are as likely to find documentation as you are of blacks asking to vote in the fifties and being denied. If there is trouble, you don't advertise, unless you mean to go to court. And right now, no one wants to go to court because they know they'll lose in front of a jury and nearly any judge. So either it gets mediated, or it gets dropped.
Here's how it's represented by people who don't like the idea:
http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/01/24/muslims-infiltrate-a-public-school-demand-special-accommodations-for-daily-prayer-and-get-it/
Just so you get the idea of why there's not a whole lot of publicity push behind it.
CAIR does do some advocacy but the pushback is horrific.
Quite simply, they have a right to practice whatever religion (assuming it's legal activity) anywhere they choose. They do not have a right to make the school support it. That's it. I don't see why that is an issue in any way. If you can't respect all in an equal fashion (which you may not be able to do) then you respectfully decline to interact. That's what I'd suggest any school do.
Yeah, that's a damned disturbing article.
+Dave Hill disturbing that it occurred? Cause I don't buy it. I think this is a clear cut case of consider the source (the top of the site says its not paranoia when they really are trying to kill you). I'd need a more credible source before giving this any weight.
+Brian Coram One issue that does arise in the particular case of Muslim students, though, is the requirement of prayer during the day. That's not easily accommodated by the school (they can't stay neutral by simply ignoring it), though the article above indicates some ways a particular school is doing it (and drawing heat in doing so).
And in that I'd have to say it's not the school's problem. They choose to practice freely and openly just as any other student could. If they get heat for it, that is now bullying and intolerance and becomes a school issue. Or, find a teacher who is friendly to the idea and get it out of official record.
Just to be clear, I don't like that it ends up this way. However, in the best interest of all, that's where the cards fall. I believe in creating an open accepting school community that would prevent issues such as intolerance. Not buffering an issue that will continue to exist.
Oh, religion isn't a workplace accommodation by the way. An employer doesn't have to allow prayer time. They can't fire you for praying though, but they can fire you for the misuse of time.
Well, +Brian Coram they are required under Title VII to make a reasonable accommodation that doesn't undue hardship on the employer. What that actually means has been open to a lot of legal wrangling (e.g., http://www5.cbia.com/cbianews/article/employers-face-new-challenges-in-accommodating-religious-beliefs-in-the-workplace/).
I'm not sure if schools operate under Title VII, but it would seem to me the same general parameters could and should apply.
+Dave Hill Reasonable accommodation is where it falls. It is reasonable to allow time for prayer, in your office and when the employer experiences no hardship. That being said, it can also be deemed unreasonable for more than 5 minutes. The same is more or less applied to smokers who take smoke breaks throughout the day, but if an employer said to stop, it would have to stop.
I don't know if Title VII applies to schools, but even if it does, reasonable accommodation may be limited to time, but not space. That depends on who is running the show.
Just heard on Fox News on Cavuto, the guest was gushing about how prayer strengthens something or other in students so what is the problem?
I'm sure if it were mandated that the children all prayed to Allah on mats twice a day at school she would have plenty of problems.. but it strengthens something or other, so what's the problem WHAT god you pray to?
Well, +Ronald Stepp, I'm sure the Fox News guest was referring to normal, All-American prayer, not that foreign stuff to weird gods and/or demons. I mean, doesn't the Constitution spell that out?