RE: Hostility

[Rick Duncan]

Joel: It is not just about teaching religion. It is about  thousands of decisions that get made in designing the curriculum.

 

Maybe the best way to put it is to think about something like this. Suppose, say, Sandy were required to send his children to a school that had a curriculum designed by someone like me, and I were required to send my children to a school designed by someone like Sandy. After about a year of fighting with the school authorities over our children being taught things we "disdain" (to quote Sandy on ID), Sandy and I might well agree that school choice is the pipe of peace. He could send his children to a school with a curriculum that he generally supports, and I could do the same with my children. No one is asking anyone to pay taxes to support his religious or secular worldview. Every child gets one free tax-supported education of choice, and every child then pays a lifetime of educational taxes to repay the scholarship.

 

Why force kids into a mold that doesn't fit their lifeways? Unless you are trying to assimilate or "Americanize" them. In which case, I again ask--who gets to decide what it means to be "Americanized?" Who decides the "common" values that are to be taught to everyone? Those who win control of the school boards? Many on this list say, "yep, so long as secularists and modernists win the school board election; but if those batty fundamentalists win the school board election, then we will get the federal courts to declare their curriculum unconstitutional." It's heads you win, tails they lose.

 

I am not a fundamentalist. I drink beer in moderation, listen to rock and roll (the Clash are OK--great attitude wrong politics, but I don't like hip hop), and read Harry Potter novels. My son recently had a major role in the University theater production of Inherit the Wind, We home school our kids, but they are regularly involved with the general community in softball, karate, theater, 4-H, dance, and other similar activities. I don't want to separate my kids from the world, I just want to be sure that their teachers are not undermining importants things about life we believe to be true.

 

 

Cheers, Rick Duncan

Joel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Why is it that some people need to have their children’s religious education done in public schools at all?  My children do as they please when eating out, but say a prayer before every meal at home, attend Temple on a regular basis, and attend religious school once a week.  I have no interest in anyone talking to my children about religion at public school. Few of the teachers where I live have any understanding about anything other then Christianity.  My children regularly do not attend the last day of school before “Winter” break because of the enormous amount of Christmas programming. 

 

Shouldn’t our young adults get solid religious upbringing at home? Unless, of course, the parent’s choose do to otherwise, which I am sure Rick would defend as their right to do.

 

Joel L. Sogol

Attorney at Law

811 21st Ave.

Tuscaloosa, Alabama  35401

ph: 205-345-0966

fx:  205-345-0971

email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 

 

Ben Franklin observed that truth wins a fair fight -- which is why we have evidence rules in U.S. courts.

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Duncan
Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 9:49 AM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Hostility

 

You know, I think the bottom line is our society is too pluralistic for a one-size-fits-all curriculum at the government school monopoly.

 

I empathize with Sandy when he expresses concern about students being taught ID (and teachers being required to teach ID) in the public schools. Many others feel the same way about sex ed, gay pride week, and evolutio-as-fact in the government schools.

 

I still think Mike McConnell said it best when he said: "A secular school does not necessarily produce atheists, but it produces young adults who inevitably think of religion as extraneous to the real world of intellectual inquiry, if they think of religion at all." The public schools are designed to inculcate and assimilate and mold impressionable children--many believers simply don't like the mold designed (or did it evolve) by those who control the public school curriculum.

 

So many of the issues that cause deep friction among us concern who gets to control what our children are taught in the public schools. I wish we could agree to disagree, and go our separate ways to schools of our own choosing.

 

From my perspective, one of the advantages of teaching ID in the public schools is that it would allow liberal secularists to appreciate the value of opt-outs (parental excusals from objectionable curriculum), of academic freedom for teachers (as Sandy put it, of teachers required to teach things they disdain), and school choice (being allowed to exit without penalty).

 

Cheers, Rick Duncan

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Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered." ! --The Prisoner

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messages to others.