As I checked my mail today, I found my normal Minneapolis Community Education classes catalog for Winter 2003. As I thought some about this, I came up with a few questions. Perhaps one of our School Board Members on the list can address my questions.
1) Does the enrollment fee for these classes cover the entire cost of the class, administration of this Minneapolis Public Schools program, and the cost to advertise these classes? I could be wrong, but even with many students contributing their tuition costs, the tuition seems rather low in many classes to cover the full cost of this. If I am correct and the District must subsidize these classes, then I question the wisdom of continuing this program in the light of budget crunches being experienced by the district. Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily questioning the merit of these classes (with the exception of the below question). I'm saying that if we have a district that can't do the basic job of graduating its regular students with the money it has, we need to focus our efforts to the basics instead of extra and superfluous programs.
2) I found it intriguing that Minneapolis Community Education is offering classes such as: Somali Culture and Islam; Yoga: Eastern Exercise & Teachings; and Shamata Meditation- Mini Retreat (retreat being held at the Mpls Buddhist Monastery). What is intriguing is that a government institution is teaching classes that are ostensibly religious in nature. Where are the separation clause activists on this? Although I disagree that the separation clause means we necessarily must completely secularize the public square, one would think that if complete secularization in order to observe the separation clause is your argument, you'd be complaining about these classes.
Whether these classes have meritorious content is not the issue. The issue is that I can imagine if similar classes like "Kingdom of Tonga Culture and Christianity" (Tonga has a government that is heavily Christian and expressly keeps the Sabbath Day holy in its constitution) instead of "Somali Culture and Islam", or "Meditating on the Gospel of Luke" instead of "Shamata Meditation" were offered, people would be all up in arms that were trying state sponsored Christianity. Why the double standard?
If the argument is we're only teaching "about" a religion and not "preaching" it (which I'd like to see when were meditating at a Buddhist monastery), then it is fully acceptable for Christian organizations to expect a class similar to "Meditation on the Gospel..." to be offered- on the argument they're only teaching "about" Christianity and not "preaching" it.
Who would have thought junk mail could have been so controversial?
Gary Bowman
Audubon Park
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