Your county's government schools are godlessly secular. The children who attend these godless government schools **must** think and reason godlessly just to cooperate in the classroom.
It is impossible to have a religiously neutral education and government schools across this nation have **never** been religiously neutral. Your county's government schools are force-feeding a non-neutral religious worldview on their children and the taxpayers are under a terrible threat of loss of their homes and businesses and prison if they refuse to pay for this anointed government school sponsored religious worldview.
Your county's government schools are just as much of a single-payer, monopolistic, price-fixed cartel, compulsory, and socialist entitlement as any other county's schools. Children who attend risk learning to be comfortable with taking money from their neighbor for tuition-free schooling. Gee! If the voting mob can give them “free” school, why not use that power to get lots of “free” stuff.
Government schools trash every First Amendment Right. They, like all schools, must to maintain order and safety. However...When government does this to children they risk learning to be comfortable with government compulsion and the trashing by government of their First Amendment and God-given human rights.
And...That's just for starters and your county's government indoctrination camps.
Having no idea whether any of verga's claims about your posting history were true, I was confused at the animus displayed and how uncivil it seemed to be.
Now at least I understand.
Rather than try to discuss my children's religion, and since your claim encompasses the entire history of public schools in our country, I can answer your post with my own experience.
I should note that the concept of "free" schooling is almost as old as our country. Jefferson pushed it, and throughout our history our communities have included public education, from the one-room "schoolhouse" where you were as likely to hear a sermon as a math lesson, to the modern edifices where religion is more of an underground thing.
I made it through 12 years of public education without ever having to sacrifice or compromise my religious principles or liberty. We had a prayer club which met regularly. Our English class took a field trip to a Presbyterian church service (we also had a wiccan speak in our class). We sung christian songs in our christmas performance.
Yes, I had to provide the "correct" answers to questions about evolution. On the other hand, I was free to answer the way I wanted, so long as I also let the teacher know I knew what the "official" answer was. I even wrote papers about creation, about salvation, and about other religious topics.
I got to mock buddism in a poem about Sidhartha. I got to witness to teachers, to pass out leaflets.
We had Young Life. We had Youth for Christ.
I belonged to a church singing group that did folk-rock operas like "It's Getting Late for the Great Planet Earth". We were allowed to perform IN the schools.
Yes, it is clearly different now then when I was in school. But you insisted that it was the same when I was in school as today. You insisted I had no idea what I was talking about.
Anyway, if you bothered to watch the video that you posted for this article, you'd know it had nothing to do with religion. I commented on the things brought up by the video.
In my county's schools, teachers are encouraged to do things. The schools do multiple field trips -- my children have been to Washington DC, to the Holocaust Museum, a German Restaurant, the Space Museum, and the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia. Other classes went to a theme park to learn physics. Elementary schools did the Baltimore Aqaurium, and various art museums were involved. That contrasts with the video's complaint that no field trips were allowed.
In our county, they have specialty schools, and kids can choose what they want to focus on, and go to those schools -- art, language, math.. my kids did biotechnology, and my daughter got to do a field trip to an FBI office to learn about serial killers.
They encourage teachers to do special things; we fight against teaching to the test, our kids don't eat in class, they get reasonable recess, and are allowed to have fun in class.
So rant about the religious stuff, but realize that it is completely unrelated to the subject of the thread you posted. I guess you can hijack your own thread all you want, but don't attack me personally for a reasoned opinion relative to the actual thread content, simply because you have an agenda about religion in the public schools.