Pop quiz: What’s the difference between the following situations:
1. Accomodating students who are required by their religion to pray at particular times throughout the day;
2. Reciting a religious prayer at a commencement ceremony.
Stumped? Because Michelle Malkin sure is. I’ll go slowly here: One is not about establishing or promoting any particular religion. One is. See? When we allow students to pray at school, we are not promoting or establishing anything. However, when we pick a particular religion’s prayer and we use that in a school ceremony, we are certainly promoting something.
Not complicated.
“Funny” that your rebuttal doesn’t show in her TrackBack. Grrrr.
Sadly your rebuttal would also fall upon deaf ears…
She does it on purpose… for the money.
The Seattle issue isn’t about allowing students to pray in school, but scheduling classes around muslim students’ prayer schedule. I’m not too sure I like that idea. Are there any other religions that could restrict when a student could attend class? If so, should classes be scheduled to avoid conflicting with those religious traditions too?
I realize that no classes are scheduled on Christian holidays, but if we do the same for the holy days for all faiths, how many days would be left for classes?
I’m with you on this regarding the commencement ceremony. The prayer doesn’t belong there.
But I also think this applies to the California case as well. I know I wouldn’t be too happy if my child was made participate in this type of role playing exercise. And it has nothing to do with Islam. If she came home and told me she had to chant “praise be to Jesus” or “the Holy Bible is the word of God”, I’d be just as angry.
The school should not be promoting any religion.
What about moments of silence or time set aside for prayer for Christian students? Civil libertarians have fought against those attempts to incorporate religion in schools, and rightly so. What’s the difference with accommodating Muslim students?
I had several Muslim friends in high school. There were no special accommodations and, somehow, they managed to make it through the day without feeling like they were offending God.
I would have come to the opposite conclusion than you did. Making special accomodations certainly does set a precedent and a hierarchy of needs, favoring one religion over all others, supported by State mandate. A prayer at commencement is one person’s expression of solidarity with the ceremony — it is a finite experience/expression.
It sure would be nice if Michelle cited a non-wingnut news source or two.
The thing about Muslim prayer is that it has to be done at certain times of day, so there are issues of accommodation that just don’t exist with Christian prayer. Now, does the whole school need to shut down? No. But certain things can be done to let students who need to pray do so without being interrupted or without disrupting class or getting in the way of other students. For instance, you don’t want to have kids dropping onto prayer mats in the hallway during between-class periods. So you provide an area at the back of the class where the kid can spread out a prayer mat, and as long as the kid is unobtrusive, no problem.
It’s no different than providing a moment of silence during homeroom so that Christians can pray. That one I don’t get, since they’re always saying that they pray all the damn time.
As for the role-playing exercise, ooooh. Scawy. Cripes. God forbid we might understand the culture that our country has come into conflict with, and understand that the basic stuff, like prayer mats and thanking Allah before a meal is no different than standing before a cross and praying or saying grace. And the person who was moaning about Christianity not getting equal time in a world religions class — well, no shit. As the wingnuts are fond of saying, this is a majority Christian country. There’s a base level of understanding just from living in this country, even if you’re not Christian, so why give it equal time when there’s much more of an information deficit with the other major faiths?
My Jewish friends were excused from school for religious holidays. The two Sikhs in the school were allowed to carry Kirpans (a ceremonial dagger). I Wasn’t exactly a liberal town, either.
zuzu,
Would you feel the same about the role playing exercise had the children (including the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.) been made to chant “praise be to Jesus” and “the Holy Bible is the word of God”?
As I said earlier, I don’t want the school to expose my children to any religion. That’s my responsibility, not theirs.
To be honest, RM, I can’t tell from the sources provided by Malkin what, exactly, the students were being asked to do. It would not be the first time that a right-wing “news” source vastly overstated or misstated an issue with religion in education. I’m thinking in particular of reports of Christian students being failed “because they dared to be Christian,” when in reality they simply had not done the assignment as asked; or the Declaration of Independence flapdoodle, where a teacher claimed to have been prevented from teaching the DoI, but in reality had been prevented from using religious tracts.
Absolutely.
What the students were asked to do is stated very clearly in the Malkin article. Assuming for the sake of argument that it is true, please revisit the question I asked in post #9.
Thanx.
I’m not willing to grant that, given her record and the obvious leanings of the source she cites. However, since the point is to learn about and demystify a religion other than the one that so saturates American culture, and with which we find ourselves in conflict, I don’t see any problem with learning the prayers and rituals and what the actual teachings of Islam are, rather than what the scaremongering folks like Michelle Malkin say they are.
There are ways, you know, to teach religion in school that has nothing to do with indoctrination. I feel a lot more comfortable that Islam (or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Judaism) could be taught in this way than Christianity, given the relentless attempts of the religious right to insert Christianity into the public schools.
So it’s ok to teach students how to practice a religion as long as it’s not Christianity?
I’m certainly no Jesus freak (actually I agree with most of what Sam Harris says about religion), but I find your argument inconsistent. Either it’s ok to teach religion in school, or it isn’t. How is your view any different than the bible-thumpers who want Christianity put into the cirriculum, but oppose any discussion of other religions?
P.S. Why am I on the moderation list? If I am breaking any of the rules of this site, please tell me what I’ve done, and I’ll refrain from doing so in the future.
Thanx.
Responsible comparative-religion classes do not teach students how to practice the religion, they teach how it’s practiced. Which is different.
It’s necessary to teach religion in certain ways in school in order to understand broader historical or cultural contexts. You can’t teach Western Civ without also teaching about the Crusades and what they were based on, or the Inquisition, or the conquistadores or the beliefs of the Puritans. Hell, an understanding of religion is also helpful in literature classes, lest the students miss the symbolism and significance of certain works.
You can’t teach about Islamic extremism without teaching about what Islam is, and how to distinguish between the everyday practices and the warped, extremist stuff. To the extent that various prayers contain clues to understanding a culture and a philosophy that is highly relevant to current events (and which most American students are not familiar with), I see no problem teaching them.
And, again, I am not conceding that the source Malkin cited accurately reports what the schools are actually teaching.
By contrast, there’s no real basis for teaching students in high school about current Christian practices, because most of them will be familiar with their own flavor, and any non-Christians will be painfully aware of the dominance of Christianity in this culture.
I actually think I’m opposed to religious role-playing of any kind. Not only is it potentially a problem for the role-players, but it’s pretty disrespectful of the religious traditions whose rituals you’re reenacting. I’m also not sure it’s all that educational. I think I understand what Communion means to Catholics, and it wasn’t necessary for someone to pretend to be a priest and put a cracker in my mouth.
I’m not convinced that’s true. I have a friend who teaches a required intro to Catholic theology course at a Catholic college, and she reports that the ignorance of theology and the Bible, even among graduates of Catholic schools, is pretty overwhelming. I think that the problem with teaching Christianity to students is that there’s a really high probability of offending someone, since most students are going to be Christian and since they’re going to come from many different denominations. Unless the teacher is extremely well-trained, it’s pretty easy to teach that Christians believe something that will seem blasphemous to many Christians in the classroom. And let’s face it: you can’t count on teachers in the U.S. being very well-trained in their subjects.
New York City public schools are closed on major Christian and Jewish holidays, and I think on Muslim holidays, too.
The difference, as Zuzu suggests, is the difference between teaching religion and teaching about religion. That’s the distinction that the federal court drew, and it’s one that makes sense to me. (I haven’t found a copy of the district court’s decision online yet, but if you Google on “Byron Union School District” you’ll find more info on it.
It’s clear that the teacher emphasized that this was a role-play exercise. Nobody — not even the critics of the curriculum, as far as I can tell — is arguing that the teacher was a Muslim, or that this was actually an effort at proselytizing. So yeah, I think it is different than a situation in which a presumptively Christian teacher is leading a class in Christian prayers as an “educational” exercise.
[...] times throughout the day; 2. Reciting a religious prayer at a commencement ceremony. In a Feministe post, Jill sets the record straight for tho [...]
Agreed. I spent some time searching and can’t come with a source I trust either. That being said, if it is true…
Yes, but you can do it without the students re-enacting the crusades or the inquisition (in my search I found a claim that students waged jihad in the form of a dice game – again, not saying it’s true). You can do it without role playing games where the students are the conquisatdors. You can do it without the students having to memorize and chant Puritan prayers.
Neither do I. Reading and discussing the holy texts and prayers of various religions in way that sheds light on the attitudes and actions of its adherents is especially relevant today. But I think what’s being described here crosses a line. I have no problem requiring students to memorize and recite a poem, the Gettysburg address, or the nations of Europe and their capitals. I do have a problem with requiring students to memorize and recite prayers of any religion, especially one that they do not practice. I don’t think students should be subjected to that, regardless of which religion is the subject of study.
Frankly, I’m quite shocked that you don’t have a problem with it. I thought most here were against prayer and religion in school.
The three sources Malkin linked to were:
- An Associated Press story
- An editorial from Investor’s Business Daily
- A right-leaning Seattle-based blog, which in turn cited and quoted in full an announcement from the Seattle Education Association
These are “wingut” news sources?
Jon, you may have noticed that I didn’t address the nickel issue, which is where the AP article comes from. Here’s the first paragraph of the Investor’s Business Daily piece, from which I surmise it’s a wingnut source (in addition, it doesn’t cite any outside sources:
Which of course is bullshit, because AFAIK, there is no such thing as “Islamic catechism.”
As for the right-wing Seattle blog, the fact that they included the rather neutral press release does not obviate the fact that their conclusion was very alarmist, and it does not change the fact that Malkin made the same conclusion, yet did not cite any other sources.
So, yes, wingnut news sources cited by a wingnut.
Thing is, the Puritans are all dead now, as are the Crusaders. So knowing or not knowing their prayers is kind of irrelevant. But Islam is a current issue, and given the fear and misunderstanding that permeates the discourse, it behooves us to try to sort out the reality from the hype. Role-play, well done, can help students understand that the little prayers and rituals are really no more sinister than the ones they perform in their own lives.
I find it interesting that the word “chant” keeps coming up as if it’s something sinister. I’ve long ago left the Catholic church, but no matter how many years pass between visits to Mass, I can still chant the “Lamb of God” thing and the “Peace be with you” thing and whatnot. Yet nobody (except the most hardcore anti-Catholic) would see that chanting as evidence of indoctrination or evil intent. It’s pretty much just rote recitation.
Being a pretty strict Church-State separationist, I believe I would come down on the side of no religious practices or rituals in school. (While I realize that causes a slew problems in itself, at least it would be fair and consistent.)
However, that’s not why Malkin and some of the other wingnuts are making a big fuss about it. They have amply demonstrated (by their past statements and actions) that they’re pissed off about Islam in the schools–and they’ve also amply demonstrated (again, past statements and actions–i.e., the dreck about the “war on Christmas”) that they’re perfectly OK with observing Christian rituals, practices, etc. in public schools and elsewhere under governmental sanction, if not encouragement. Their oft-stated position is: it’s a majority Christian country, so if any minority religious persons (or non-religious persons) don’t like it, tough–they can leave the U.S.
However, what they disregard is the protection of the rights of minority from the majority–which, one can argue, is one of the principals on which our country was founded and which makes our country great (even with all its problems). It’s unfortunate that these wingnuts seem to see this as a competition in which there have to be winners and losers–coexistence and compromise is, I guess, just for girly men and fuzzy-headed one-worlders.
Role-play, well done, can help students understand that the little prayers and rituals are really no more sinister than the ones they perform in their own lives.
But it can make atheist or agnostic students feel like there’s something wrong with them for not believing in God. That’s usually the atheist/agnostic/civil libertarian argument against allowing religion (any religion) in schools. It’s an unfair imposition on non-believing kids or on kids who believe in a different religion, not necessarily Christianity.
Many non-Christians don’t have a favorable view of Christianity. Should Muslim or Jewish students be forced to learn Christian prayers and rituals to see that they aren’t more sinister than Muslim or Jewish rituals? It is possible to teach tolerance and understanding without violating the wall between church and state. Probably the best way would be to teach kids about Muslim history to prove to them that, historically, Arab and Persian Muslims have been at the forefront of philosophy, literature, mathematics, science, and medicine.
I can’t get around the idea that role-playing is a kind of cultural appropriation. Christianity is the dominant religion. That does not give Christians the right to treat other people’s sacred rituals as teaching tools. To my mind, you really should only participate in a religious ritual if you believe in it or if you’re invited to participate in it by someone who does. “Role playing”, which divorces the ritual from its sacred context, seems really problematic and disrespectful to me.
There are lots of ways to teach kids about other religions without having them role play. For instance, you can teach them what prayers say without actually having them recite the prayers as if they were praying. You can invite members of the religion to address the class and answer questions. It’s not that hard to teach kids about religion without having them simulate religious practice.
Well then I shall insist that all tax-supported institutions schedule around:
(at dawn) Matins
(at dawn) Lauds
(at ~6 AM) Prime
(at ~9 AM) Terce
(at Noon) Sext
(at ~3 PM) None
(at sunset) Vespers
(at bedtime) Compline
Either the system is secular or it is not.
One persons religion is another persons nonsense so stay out of it all together or you will end up need cauldrin space for Wiccans and tin-foil hats for Scientologiests just to be fair.
Religion is a choice. Any imagined “requirement” is chosen so either rechoose or go somewhere else.