A collection of essays and rants, inspired and taken from a series that I have been writing for several years concerning this subject. A stirring account of how certain issues are poisoned by organized religions and why we as a society would be much...
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"God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within an organized religion!"– Superintendent Chalmers (The Simpsons)
Prayers in public schools were still ongoing when I was in elementary school. It wasn't until I reached grade 10 when it all stopped. That was when the big case up here in Canada (Zylberberg v. Sudbury Board Of Education) brought that all to an end. It had always made me feel uncomfortable to stand there and watch as my classmates would all close their eyes and drop their heads while prayer was being broadcast on the intercom in every room throughout the school. I remember there being a handful of students who didn't want to participate and they left the room and stood in the hallways rather than be forced to participate. I really didn't think making people who were non-Christian stand in the hallways made that much of a difference since the intercoms in the halls still broadcast the same prayer for them to hear outside the classroom as well. It was a very disrespectful act, especially to those who were not Christian and I for one was glad to see this act of favouritism come to an end.
While many Canadians assume that the whole religion in school issue is behind us, that simply isn't true. Schools up here are trying just as hard to get away with whatever they can hoping that parents are either too busy or too tired from work to even notice what's going on in the classroom. Over a year and half ago, my oldest son came home with his weekly spelling words. At the beginning of each week, he is required to write a sentence about each word to help him understand the meaning and help him memorize the spelling for future tests. That week two of the words on his list were 'baby' and 'Jesus', and this list was handed out a week before the Christmas break. I sent a scolding letter to my son's teacher accusing her of religious favouritism and that since the Christian holiday was the only one getting its own special words that week, she was showing favourites and that was unacceptable. I informed her that if there were any future references to anything religious in my son's homework, I would not hesitate to get the principal and the super involved. I had informed her that the next time I had to protest about religion being taught in my son's public school, I would not hesitate to do so through an attorney. Turns out I wasn't the only parent who had an issue with Christmas being too religious in this particular public school. There was so much protest to the pushing of religion in religion in the classroom that the annual Christmas assembly that parents are usually invited to was cancelled that year and there hasn't been one since. Parents had no issue with exercises that were about Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman and other holiday tales but didn't want baby Jesus or God forced onto our children.
Another good example north of the border where religion is causing trouble in schools in Canada would be the school in the Toronto area that is allowing children of the Muslim faith to pray in the cafeteria. While I am against praying of any kind in school, the school isn't trying to promote religion in this case as the goal is to keep the kids in school for as long as possible and not miss any classes in the process. The problem is the amount of times a Muslim has to pray every day. Kids had to leave school in the middle of the day to pray and many of them didn't return to school to finish their classes afterwards. So the reason for allowing prayer in school this time wasn't to promote religion (at least I hope not) but to prevent kids from missing classes and staying in school to attend the rest of their day. While I still don't approve of any kind of organized prayer in public schools, I can see why some teachers would offer this suggestion for what seemed to be good reasons which was to prevent kids from missing a lot of classes for religious reasons. This issue has yet to be resolved, but I can see this one going to court as well. Christians are upset because they were barred from doing prayers in the morning and so if they can't pray in school, neither should anyone else. I know it sounds childish but to a degree I agree with them. If you're going to ban one creed from being allowed to practice in schools, you've got to ban them all.
