Posted on 01/04/2002 4:03:51 AM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
"All the businesses close, the schools close and a whole bunch of other things are closed yet our school pretends that Christmas doesn't even exist."
Douglas Moore, 3rd grade, Cayuga Heights Elementary School
My son took a simple book about Christmas to school. He bought the book with his own money at the Friends Of The Library sale. It was a short story about Santa Claus and a magic mirror. The book also contained a record that had a few Christmas songs on it. He intended to share the book and record with his classmates but he was not allowed to do so because the subject of the book and the record was Christmas.
It appears that the school is so intent on avoiding controversy that they have chosen to maintain an environment at the school which denies that Christmas exists. My son wants to know why there is such a drastic difference between the school and the rest of his world. He believes all of the kids in his school live in the same world he does.
This is very hard on him. He wants to know why things are this way in the school and who are the adults behind it. After all, the White House, Ithaca Commons, the malls, the grocery stores, TV and the radio all have gotten into the Christmas spirit. We doubt very much that those people objecting to Christmas are able to avoid going to all of these places in order to keep from being exposed to Christmas and/or controversy.
My son is having a hard time with this because he wants to live according to the way he is being taught in the school. He believes he should accept all people the way they are. He knows he should accept diversity and be tolerant of those whose beliefs differ from his. He feels the school's actions towards Christmas are completely the opposite of the values being taught there.
His feeling is that it would be better for everyone if Christmas was brought back into the school. He feels it would be better to teach the students about the beliefs and traditions of those who don't celebrate Christmas as well. Telling children that Christmas is worse than PG-13 is wrong. Pulling this cruel hoax on children is something that should not be allowed to continue.
Perhaps there are times when adults should listen to children rather than take such advantage of their powerless position in the world.
Apparently, when it comes to Christianity they cannot practice what they preach.
No surpise there, as Ithaca is the City of Evil.
I think the original Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore had to be a conservative. He was always image conscious, knowing that the kids were looking for a good example from him and he always did his best to set one.
You should distinguish more carefully between evil and stupidity. You have to be intelligent to be evil.
At my daughter's primary school here in Ohio the parents were invited to a holiday party during which the children in two classes sang Christmas carols. These included all the standards referring to Christ as our saviour and the Son of G*d. Hannukah had already passed, but they also threw in the dredel song along with something African to cover Kwanza. It was very nice and, as far as I could tell, no one there or elsewhere in the school or community had any objections to the song selections. I'm not going to name the district as I'm sure there are pinheads from the ACLU who lurk here, but the point is that there are remaining islands of sanity out there and I'm thankful to be living in one.
It remains a mystery to me how the plain phrase "free exercise of" is so unintelligible to socialists. There will have to come a time when the Constitution is enforced as it is written, or those who now ignore and lie about its meaning are forced to lay their true motives bare. A recurring historic theme of the last century was the rise and eventual destruction by free peoples of fascism in all its forms (Nazi, Communist, el al). The same struggle goes on, this time in our own towns and communities.
HEY! I am proud to have graduated from Cornell, and I turned out OK!!
Hey, I knew you 'turned out OK' as soon as I read your screen name! LOL
You could be right...
From Fox News and the Boston Globe:
A 7-year-old Massachusetts girl and her parents have sued their local school system for religious discrimination because they say a teacher told the girl she couldn't share a book about the birth of Jesus Christ with her class.
Laura Greska's First Amendment free speech rights were violated, said Vincent McCarthy, a lawyer for the American Center for Law and Justice, which is representing Laura and her parents, Jessie and Robert Greska.
Laura took a copy of The First Christmas to her second-grade class at Northwest Elementary School in December after her teacher told students to bring in a book about Christmas traditions. When Laura's teacher realized the book focused on the birth of Jesus Christ, she told the girl she couldn't share it because it was religious, McCarthy said.
A few lawsuits like this would probably go a long way to slowing down the decay in "the City of Evil" school system.
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