Posted on 05/27/2015 10:21:18 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Mackenzie Fraiser may be a sixth grader, but she knows more about her constitutional rights than Somerset Academy. The Las Vegas school took a big gamble when it told a 12-year-old girl to drop God from a paper for leadership class — despite the Education Department’s own rules allowing it. For a project on self-esteem, Mackenzie wanted to use John 3:16 to explain how her faith affects her identity. Since she was required to include an “inspirational statement,” Mackenzie turned to what inspired her most: the Bible. Before she could finish, the teachers ordered her to strip any reference to Scripture or God, claiming that it violated a government policy. tony perkins frc
When Mackenzie got home and told her father (a pastor) what happened, he was rightfully upset. The family contacted our good friends at Liberty Institute, who gave the school 10 days to issue a written apology to Mackenzie. “Government officials telling little girls they can’t mention God is not the law,” wrote Liberty President Kelly Shackelford. “It’s religious discrimination, and it’s morally wrong.”
The Assistant Principal tried to justify the ban, claiming (wrongly) that the Department of Education prohibits religious expression in class. And while it sounds like something the DOE would do, the reality is that no such guidelines exist. In fact, what does exist is a defense of students’ rights!
These children “should never be intimidated into feeling like their faith is bad or something they have to hide,” said Senior Counsel Jeremy Dys. “The Supreme Court and the United States Department of Education repeatedly recognize that ‘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.’ Banning students from expressing their religious beliefs in class assignments teaches students that religion is bad. The school officials at Somerset Academy must apologize and affirm her right as a student to express her faith in a school assignment.” Let’s hope the administrators listen — and right this horrible wrong.
Tony Perkins heads the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.
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You send your kids to caesar’s schools, don’t be surprised when they come back to you as romans.
Government must be removed from all aspects of education. When government runs schools, government **will** trash First Amendment Rights and use the threat of police action to force taxpayers to pay for it.
Why?
Reason: Because all schools must restrict First Amendment Rights of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion to maintain order and safety. Also...It is **impossible** to have a religiously, cultural, and politically neutral education. Can't happen because such a state of neutrality can not exist in the mind of any human.
Private schools have no problem with the First Amendment because they are freely chosen by the parents. The parents, teachers, principal, and members of the private board running the school all mutually agree upon those restrictions needed to maintain order and safety.
There is no religiously neutral option open to the government schools;
1) Forbidding the discussion of Christianity is not religiously neutral. It teaches children that faith must be hidden away as if it were a bathroom activity.
2) Allowing free expression of religion means that captive children will be subjected to the religious beliefs of their neighbor's child. Today, that means atheism, paganism, Mormonism, Islam, Wicanism and the rest.
3) Godless schools are not religiously neutral. Children in these schools **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate in the godless classroom. How could it be otherwise?
They can’t even learn about Caeser and Romans.
It is a persons expressed belief, spoken of as we do with or about our daily life with friends, and as an expression of our belief. Just like politics, some are liberal, some or conservative, some or libertarians, and some ignore the whole thing.
We are free to express our opinion, including our faith. Yet it is being suppressed at school and as recently ... the well accomplished naval Chaplin,counselor that is possibly being drummed our of his career for mentioning to one seeking advice, that he was settled by his faith in Christ/God. How is it wrong for him to express what serves and supports him?a
1) Schools
-—The government should get out of the education business. It is impossible to have a religiously, politically, and culturally neutral education. Those with the most political clout get to impose their worldview on the **captive** audience. We should begin to the process of privatizing the delivery of education.
-— And....It is already happening. Atheists, pagans, satanists, Islamists are bringing their beliefs into the compulsory government schools and subjecting curious **captive** children to their worldview.
...The best way to combat the growth of paganism and atheism is to rear up children into adults who understand and can defend their Judeo-Christian beliefs and our founding principles. Putting children in godless schools is a good way to teach them to think godlessly but NOT a good way to rear them in their faith.
2) Generally
We are dangerously close to a time when simply being a Christian is a hate crime that will come with loss of employment and shunning. Christian will not be permitted to participate in our nation's major cultural institutions. It is already happening.
The best way to confront this is to rear up righteous children into adulthood who can defend and promote their faith and our nation's founding principles.
( Not proof read)
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