YOUR Education System Workin' for YOU! (again)

[NousDefionsDoc]

Declaration of Independence Banned at Calif School
Wed Nov 24, 2004 04:12 PM ET


By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.

"Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country," he said. "There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence."

Vidmar could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in San Jose and claims violations of Williams rights to free speech under the First Amendment.

Phyllis Vogel, assistant superintendent for Cupertino Unified School District, said the lawsuit had been forwarded to a staff attorney. She declined to comment further.

Williams asserts in the lawsuit that since May he has been required to submit all of his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to Vidmar for approval, and that the principal will not permit him to use any that contain references to God or Christianity.

Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' "The Rights of the Colonists" and William Penn's "The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania."

"He hands out a lot of material and perhaps 5 to 10 percent refers to God and Christianity because that's what the founders wrote," said Thompson, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, which advocates for religious freedom. "The principal seems to be systematically censoring material that refers to Christianity and it is pure discrimination."

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case of a California atheist who wanted the words "under God" struck from the Pledge of Allegiance as recited by school children. The appeals court in California had found that the phrase amounted to a violation of church and state separation.


http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6911883

[The Reaper]

Saw that at Drudge.

They even put the phone number to the Principal's office up on the headline. Gotta love Drudge.

Anyone who doubted the direction Kali has been headed, this is your wake up call. Get out now.

TR

[Roguish Lawyer]

Saw that at Drudge.

They even put the phone number to the Principal's office up on the headline. Gotta love Drudge.

Anyone who doubted the direction Kali has been headed, this is your wake up call. Get out now.

TR

Or come help fix the problem.

[The Reaper]

Or come help fix the problem.

Your state is beyond surgical intervention and I do not have the 20 million rounds of ammo it would take to fix the problem.

Kali is expectant and the best we can hope for is that it falls into the ocean with all of the people who make decisions like this before the disease is transmitted to other states.

Good luck, Sir.

TR

[NousDefionsDoc]

Students Free to Thank Anybody, Except God
Monday, November 22, 2004
By Laurel Lundstrom

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving — as long as it's not God.

And that is how it should be, administrators say.

Young students across the state read stories about the Pilgrims and Native Americans, simulate Mayflower voyages, hold mock feasts and learn about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups.

But what teachers don't mention when they describe the feast is that the Pilgrims not only thanked the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, but repeatedly thanked God.

"We teach about Thanksgiving from a purely historical perspective, not from a religious perspective," said Charles Ridgell, St. Mary's County Public Schools curriculum and instruction director.

School administrators statewide agree, saying religion never coincides with how they teach Thanksgiving to students.

Too much censorship can compromise a strong curriculum, some educators said.

"Schools don't want to do anything that would influence or act against the religious preferences of their students," said Lissa Brown, Maryland State Teacher's Association assistant executive director. "But the whole subject of religious toleration is a part of our history and needs to be taught."

Brown, a former social studies teacher, said she was surprised to hear schools aren't teaching about the Pilgrims' faith in God.

Teaching about a secular Thanksgiving counters the holiday's original premise as stated by George Washington in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation: "It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor."

Such omissions also deny the Pilgrims' religious fervor in the celebration of Thanksgiving, as related by Harry Hornblower, an archaeologist who spent years researching the history of the holiday.

According to the Web site Plimoth.org, dedicated to Hornblower's research, the Pilgrims "fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean."

Thanksgiving, the site said, derived from their belief that "a series of misfortunes meant that God was displeased, and the people should both search for the cause and humble themselves before him. Good fortune, on the other hand, was a sign of God's mercy and compassion, and therefore he should be thanked and praised."

But researchers like Hornblower aren't mentioned in classrooms. "We don't focus on religion, because it is not a part of our curriculum," said Sandra Grulich, Cecil County Schools' elementary school curriculum coordinator.

Opponents of censorship worry that by omitting such religious material from lesson plans, educators are compromising their students' education.

"School administrators need to get a backbone," said Joel Whitehead, president and lawyer at the Rutherford Institute, a constitutional rights defense organization. "We are in real danger of throwing out cultural heritage in our country if we don't know what Thanksgiving is really about."

Mentioning that the Pilgrims were Puritan is about as close as most administrators are willing to step to integrate religion into their curriculums.

"We mention they were Puritan but students usually just understand that they had a belief system and not much more than that," said Carol Williamson, Queen Anne's County Schools' associate superintendent.

Thanksgiving is usually taught as a part of social studies and emphasizes cultural immersion.

"The Pilgrim Story is read in Spanish and English," said Alfreda Adams, principal at Mills-Parole Elementary School in Anne Arundel County where 70 Hispanic students attend. "We make sure that we celebrate all cultures."

The Mayflower, Pilgrims, Native Americans become enduring symbols to students before the two-day hiatus they are granted each year to spend time with their families.

"In elementary school we learned that the Pilgrims came to the Indians and they all had a feast," said Emmanuel Cobington, 13, a seventh-grader at Annapolis Middle School.

Emmanuel said his teachers never mentioned that the holiday was religious, but he added that he learns about different denominations in some of his classes.

"We learn about different religions like Judaism and Christianity in our social studies classes," he said.

Whitehead advocates for more classes like Emmanuel's and says it is harmful to students when administrators censor curriculums for fear of offending someone.

"Education is inevitably going to offend someone," said Whitehead. "We need to get beyond being politically correct, or everything will be glossed over."

[NousDefionsDoc]

Steve Chapman
Schools, God and Thanksgiving

Published November 25, 2004

In Garwood, N.J., 5th graders at a public school recently were asked to write poems about Thanksgiving. Ten-year-old Kaeley Hay wrote one that ended with, "Pilgrims thank God for what they were given, Everybody say ... happy Thanksgiving!"

Her classmates voted to put the poem on display in the hallway. But when it was posted, one word was missing from what she had written: God. School officials apparently decided any mention of that subject was inappropriate for a public school, so they took it out.

They're mistaken, of course, both as a matter of common sense and as a matter of constitutional law. Teaching about Thanksgiving while omitting its religious component is like teaching about Antarctica without mentioning the cold. The Pilgrims were a people on a religious mission, and when they gave thanks, they weren't giving it to the cashiers at Target.

As for invoking the Almighty in a public school, the U.S. Supreme Court never said kids can't talk about religion--only that school officials may not lead prayers, promote religious faith or stigmatize non-believers. State sponsorship of religion is forbidden; the free exercise of religion by students is not. The Supreme Court has emphatically rejected the idea that, as it put it, "students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

School officials changed their minds once the girl's mother complained and their lawyer advised them that this sort of expression is protected. But it's clear that when it comes to religion, some administrators still have trouble distinguishing what is allowed and what is not. A school district in Annapolis, Md., for example, makes a policy of avoiding any mention of Providence during discussions and re-enactments of the original Thanksgiving feast. "We teach about Thanksgiving from a purely historical perspective, not from a religious perspective," a school official told Capital News Service.

Now, I am not a religious believer, but to pretend you can learn about history while staying fastidiously clear of religion is just silly. The Pilgrims who began this tradition in 1621 would be amazed at the notion that anyone could begin to understand it without reference to God. In this instance, as in many, separating religion from history leaves you with neither religion nor history.

You may take this as proof that fanatical secularists are relentlessly eradicating faith from the public sphere. In fact, what makes such incidents notable is that they are increasingly rare. Over the past decade and a half, public schools have recognized that the Constitution doesn't require schools to be religion-free zones--and that a knowledge of the role of religion in history, current events and literature is an essential part of education.

Although Republicans often accuse Democrats of an aversion to spirituality, this is not a partisan issue. In 2003, President Bush's Education Department put out guidelines that stated, "Students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions." In 1998, the exact same sentence appeared in guidelines published by President Bill Clinton's Education Department.

It needed to be said on both occasions because not so long ago, school officials took a different view of religion. Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center, says that "in the late '80s, schools were afraid to teach it and textbooks didn't mention it." A study of junior and senior high school history textbooks in the mid-1980s by the liberal group People for the American Way found, "Religion is simply not treated as a significant element in American life."

But a consensus formed around the idea that though schools should not teach religion, they have an educational responsibility to teach about it. Over time, changed attitudes bore fruit. Today, says Haynes, state curriculum standards generally require some attention to religion. "The successes are not insignificant," he says. "The newer generation of textbooks is much better."

Still, he says, we have a long way to go in acknowledging the full influence of faith. A textbook today might mention what a previous one did not, such as the fact that Martin Luther King Jr. was a minister. "But it doesn't really explain how his religion shaped his vision of civil rights," says Haynes.

But in most places, students are no longer shielded from religious references as if they were contagious microbes. In Garwood, N.J., Kaeley Hay got to see her poem displayed as she had written it, "God" and all. And that's something to be thankful for.

[Bill Harsey]

Do you think these would get an edit if the praise was to Allah? (said with forgiveness sought from any good Muslim because I'm only siting an example of our special form of United States liberal correctness)

These same school admins and teachers wouldn't have the guts to edit that.

[lrd]

School administrators statewide agree, saying religion never coincides with how they teach Thanksgiving to students.
They seem to be more than willing to emphasize that from 1634 to 1655 Maryland was the one place in America where religious tolerance was practiced. They like to remind us that Jamestown Catholics hopped on the Arc when it pulled in for supplies before heading up the Potomac River to St. Maries City. It amazes me that they can be so proud of their religious past, but refuse to allow it discussed in the classroon.

Of course, "religious tolerance" meant something different in 1634, so maybe they don't want it discussed too much.

[CRad]

Over the past decade and a half, public schools have recognized that the Constitution doesn't require schools to be religion-free zones--and that a knowledge of the role of religion in history, current events and literature is an essential part of education.



Amen to that!

How can schools teach the history of America and colonization without talking about religion and the huge impact it had on the first immigrants?

Having said that, I am compelled to note that my 8 yr old is coming home from public school with points of view and questions about religion that bother me. I don't like the idea of his teacher or classmates giving him opinions on religion that don't gel with my thinking. I was baptized Morman and the other half is a "No Preference" according to his dog tags. (He's probably a Deist or Agnostic) Though I'm a member of the LDS Church Presbyterian was the dominant doctrine while growing up. None of what my son is coming home with is familar to me.

I don't like the idea of him getting religious training from what should be a secular source. He needs to be taught an honest history of his country and that means he needs to learn what happens when a government sticks its fingers into a person's faith.

At his school the students say the Pledge of Allegiance which includes the words "Under God" and that is followed by a moment of silence. I assume the moment of silence is for those who want to say a prayer. I have no trouble with that and appreciate the school giving those few minutes to the students. What I don't want is for him to come home and tell me I'm going to Hell for my beliefs.

[sandytroop]

But THIS ignorance just amazes me. Thanksgiving, a day made a legal day of celebration and rememberance by Abraham Lincoln, was founded in a speech wherein president Lincoln made the following statements:

"To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God."

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."

"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

((( That's right lads, Thanksgiving is a day to remember America's soldiers and sailors and ask God to watch over them!)))

Yup, not a religious day at all. Fredom from religion is alive an well, eh? I'm not a religious man, but really, the average mutt's refusal to just read history and accept it and not demand it be re-written to fit their personal prejudices... it's enough to make President General George Washington himself (oh, another one of those guys who helped found this country on purely secular grounds ... NOT...) roll in his grave.

[Maas]

You may find this hard to believe, but my neice and her husband are Southern Baptist Missionaries. Both from Tennessee and do you know where they were sent?

Somewhere close to Berkley, Cal.

Sounds like they have hard road ahead of them.

[SP5IC]

Today it is Saint Marys City, but they had a super oyster festival years ago. About 20 plus years ago, I took the kids & wife down there. As we were eating tons of oysters, my middle child asked, where are the crackers, I responded, "Honey, they're sitting all around you." The dent in my leg is still there. Mrs. SP5IC does not tolerate stupidity. It was the Arc & the Dove that populated that area. The town has a very fine public liberal arts college. There was a POW camp near there during the Civil War. PAX River NAS is up the bay from there. Wish I'd bought land there in 1980.

[NousDefionsDoc]

http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/islam/c01/2CAngelLily.html

[Jo Sul]

OK, RL and AL - time for one of them California law suits!

[DanUCSB]

http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/islam/c01/2CAngelLily.html

Hey, good stuff. They're training kids up there to go into 5th Group. :D