TokyoNiGHTS

Appeal on school's lesson in Muslim culture is rejected

I'm in complete agreement that this shouldn't be allowed in the schools anymore than schools trying to force people to learn about any other religion. Although its amusing that the same people who are against this are the ones always pushing to get God in schools more.

Lexis

I think you can teach the history, culture etc of a religion without doing this kind of "let's pretend" game. We learnt about diffirent faiths without any of this.

elisheva

Yeah..while I can see that they're trying to promote understanding, that's not the way to do it. I don't see how it's "unconstitutional religious indoctrination" - but there's something off about it. The general goal of teaching kids to relate to other cultures is wonderful, though.
Wouldn't unconstitutional religious indoctrination be more like making public school kids say a religious prayer every morning?

Lain

There are different ways to understand and "experience" a religion. This is not one of them. Like all of you said, it's like forcing another religion on to another person or converting them (even if this was not the intention).

This is why there's this thing the government came up with that's called Seperation of State and Church.

AlexEvans

This doesn't seem to be teaching anything, and it's outrageous. Even when I was in early grade school (I'm not exactly sure when this stopped) we were only forced to listen to prayers, not to participate, memorize, or take Biblical names.

What's next? 'Pretending' to follow the dress code?

GrhmLz

Okay, this is a big double standard. Christians have taken slack for violating a certain interpretation of the "Separation of Church and State Clause" (which is NOT In the Constitution btw; it was pulled out of context from one of Thomas Jefferson's written documents/speeches) in many different ways. That's why prayer was successfully taken out of the public schools and public, govt. buildings have had issues by the court to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments.

This annoys me b/c another "faith/religion" is basically being allowed special treatment because it is being disguised under the guise of "educating." Ummm... fine, personally, i don't have a problem with faith/religion being discussed/shared in school but if it's going to be allowed for one it should be allowed for ALL!!! I believe in the Freedom of Religion free exercise clause in the Constitution.

pacifierrocks

I am all for people understanding different religions and cultures. I don't see anything wrong with teaching about reilgion. But I don't think that the way that teacher went about it was the wrong way. I think she took the 30 Days episode to heart a little bit too much.

I don't like prayer in schools, doesn't matter who's prayer it is. The minute of silence, which we had in my school, was just fine. Kids could do whatever they wanted in that minute. pray, take a nap, whatever. Teaching the history of religions and basic beliefs of any reilgion is fine. Forcing a certain reilgion on the students is what I don't like. Which is what sounds like the teacher is doing. I'm sure she had the best intentions but that was not the way to go about it.