A Lot of Religion in Public Schools! (duh)

12 03 2007

Consensus Is Sought on Religion in Schools:
Diverse groups meet to weigh issues that vex public education

EDUCATION WEEK (link may require registration)
By Andrew Trotter

Nashville, Tenn.

How can the nation’s public schools accommodate students’ religious practices, prepare them for living in a society with a multiplicity of faiths, and avoid related conflicts that disrupt the schools’ educational mission and consume time and money in lawsuits?

Those were the central questions that a conference of some 50 educators, curriculum experts, religious leaders, and legal scholars tried to tackle here last week.

And none too soon, because “there’s a lot of religion going on in public schools,” said Charles C. Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center of the Washington-based Freedom Forum, one of three groups hosting the conference at Vanderbilt University, which is also affiliated with the First Amendment Center. . .

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5 responses

12 03 2007
University Update (22:06:07) :

A Lot of Religion in Public Schools! (duh)

12 03 2007
misedjj (23:28:20) :

Just wanted to add this part, for those who don’t register at the link but are keenly interested in school-religion issues:
“Mr. Haynes of the First Amendment Center said, locally designed policies
are the best way for schools to head off conflicts over religious issues.

Unfortunately, he said, “school boards are getting a lot of bad advice”
on handling religious issues, and many administrators fear that their
attempts to resolve those issues may backfire and inflame latent conflicts.

Another complication, Mr. Haynes said, is that some national groups have
a political interest in keeping religious controversies about public
schools festering. . .”

13 03 2007
misedjj (09:00:12) :

When Vanderbilt U’s blog linked this post (above) I tracked back and came across this book from its press:
“Lobbying for Higher Education : How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy”

It relates not just to “religion in education” but admissions, funding, discrimination and affirmative action, science and research, testing and credentialing, politics in the classroom, you name it.

13 03 2007
misedjj (11:51:34) :

Of course religion comes to school every day from home too, which connects back to Ye Olde Deluder Satan —

Puritan culture [led to children named] Silence, Humiliation, and Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin ( the writing on the wall from the Book of Daniel). . . Sometime before 1660, a preacher’s son-turned doctor changed his name from Hath-Christ-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Woudst-Be-Damned Barbone to the more sensible Nicholas Barbon. He went on to found the world’s first insurance company, thus storing up treasures on Earth and probably getting himself in even more trouble with his dad.

26 03 2007
misedjj (22:29:50) :

From Pharyngula —

AC Grayling on the growing resentment of and towards religion

Category: Godlessness
Posted on: March 26, 2007 2:21 PM, by PZ Myers

Juicy stuff from AC Grayling, who writes on the futility of faith and why we’re all getting a bit peevish:

Religion has lost respectability as a result of the atrocities committed in its name, because of its clamouring for an undue slice of the pie, and for its efforts to impose its views on others.

Where politeness once restrained non-religious folk from expressing their true feelings about religion, both politeness and restraint have been banished by the confrontational face that faith now turns to the modern world.

This, then, is why there is an acerbic quarrel going on between religion and non-religion today, and it does not look as if it will end soon.

It does have a bit of an “it’s all their fault” tone, but I think it’s fair. The religious may have felt threatened first, since secular progress was leaving them behind, but the only side damning the other is that of religion.

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