Huh? School libraries make choices all the time as to which books to offer and which not to. I don't agree with this lady, but she has the right to try to get the books removed if she wants. Has nothing to do with 'big government.'
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The fundamental problem underlying all of these hundreds of curriculum and policy issues is:
Government schools and the First Amendment are utterly and completely and irredeemably INCOMPATIBLE. The two can not coexist! It is axiomatic.
Why should this woman be forced by the government into the position of having to fight for her religious beliefs? If education were completely privatized the entire issue of how the government chooses literature for children would be moot.
The question here is does any government on any level have the right to force ( by threat of armed police action) children into its indoctrination centers and then fill them with ideas that undermine the traditions taught at home?
As Aquinasfan pointed out in message #76, and Texas Shutterbug in #37, the Harry Potter books do have religious consequences for all the children in the school whether or a child reads them.
All the children are abuzz with Harry Potter. These books, as well as the school book covers, lunch boxes, book bags, pencils, toys, and action figures brought into the police enforced compulsory school desensitize children to witchcraft, and many parents do not want their young children’s curiosity piqued in this manner. Who is the government to force children into a semi-prisonlike school that does exactly that?
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education.
( By the way, I love the Potter books. Eragon and Eldest too.)
Huh? School libraries make choices all the time as to which books to offer and which not to.
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And those choices and exclusions are **never** religiously, culturally, or politically neutral.
No matter what the government does, the government through its compulsory, police enforced, governemnt schools will establish the religion, culture, and politics of some, and trash that of others.
If our Founding Fathers were alive today and could see the harm to freedom our police enforced, compulsory, government kiddie prisons have wrought, they would have written into the federal and all state constitutions:
Complete separation of SCHOOL and state.
I agree with you both. First, that a citizen has the right to petition government, no matter how nutty she is.
Second, that we shouldn’t have government run education.