On Oct. 25, a majority of the School Board approved an academic calendar for 2006-07 that eliminated vacation days coinciding with Yom Kippur, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter. The only religious holiday left on the calendar was Christmas, which falls during the district's winter break. The religious days would be replaced with time off for Washington's birthday in February and two days near the end of the school year.
The vote came one year after a request from Bedier that students be given a day off for Eid al-Fitr, the end of the 30-day fasting period of Ramadan. The district's calendar committee studied the issue but approved a secular calendar instead. The only dissent came from the committee's lone Muslim.
I am going to put this in perspective for you. Do you think that the Christian students who received Good Friday off in the recent past have spent that time in prayer?
Get real. It's another day at the beach for them, literally. Or at the mall.
You can say, "Oh, it's the symbolism of it, our common culture rests on the retention of such symbolic observances, no matter how devoid of actual meaning they have become."
Whatever. Head to Clearwater Beach on Good Friday and ask the Catholics about it.
I believe that schools should, at all costs, deal with religion honestly. They should call Easter, Easter, Christmas, Christmas, allow children to draw pictures of Jesus, allow children to bring Bibles to school, sing Christmas songs as part of choral presentations, allow students giving speeches to mention God all they want. I believe that high schools should offer courses in comparative religions and Bible as literature, if they want. Absences for religious observance should be excused, of course.
But on the other hand, as a Catholic with a keen eye to the history of the origins of the Catholic school system in this country, I am also, while being an absolutist on student freedom of expression, and an honest presentation of religion when it comes up in the curriculum, also very wary of what the government schools themselves present. I often use the example - when my older sons were very young , I lived in rural Middle Tennesse, where the Church of Christ (not the United Church of Christ - the Church of Christ that dominates in Tennessee, that is extreme fundamentalists and some of which will only use, for example, musical instruments that are mentioned in the Bible. And so on) dominated, and where it was said, even in the early 80's, many public school teachers still led prayers with their students. I was not keen on my Catholic child being under the tutelage, all day,e very day, of a Church of Christ teacher who felt the freedom to evangelize in her classroom. That, I might remind you, is the way the American bishops felt in the 19th century as well.
So, no, I don't believe that government schools should sanction official prayer - let the students pray on their own, if they want, on school grounds, but keep teachers and administrators and those who would write dull, watered down appeals to Higher Beings out of it.
So on this issue...I really can't get upset about it either way. It seems an overreaction, on the one hand, but on the other hand, frankly, students need more time in the classroom, not less. This type of secularization of government schools does not bother me, and it would bother me even less if states and school systems instituted tax credits or vouchers to give parents more of a choice - or if religious institutions girded their loins, and made the type of decisions those bishops did a hundred and fifty years ago. We're not going to wait for the government to help us out any longer. If we believe that religion is an essential component of children's education, we will put our money where our mouths are, get our people fired up, and get more Catholic schools open with lower, or non-existent tuition. Moves like this set the contrast in sharper relief, and should inspire religious and private schools to make the alternative they claim to provide clearer and more available.
Bottom line: I can get upset if the government school doesn't respect my religious tradition and limits my freedom of expression, but I don't think I can get upset if the government school doesn't embed my own religious traditions in its practice.
Just a word on days off and religious observance. The traditional spring break for Catholic schools has often been the week after Easter. It's when the NCEA is, and so on. Most of the Catholic schols I've been involved in over the past ten years ago, have not at all felt tied to that tradition, and usually schedule theirs in line with the public schools. At times, this coincides with Holy Week, a scheduling glitch that often distressed the priests I knew - why? Because if the kids were in school during Holy Week, at least up until Holy Thursday morning, there was a better chance that they and their families would catch some Holy Week observances, something that was totally obliterated, they felt, by a Holy Week Spring Break, which encouraged thinking of the time as simple vacation, diminishing the spiritual factor.
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