The article is a little vague in when exactly this stuff was happening. They said sporting events "and other activities". If these are extra-curricular activities then it's alright (Don't sports teams pretty much universally pray before each game anyway?), but if it was happening in a classroom during school hours, then it's a whole different story. Assigning religion-oriented work is certainly an issue, though promoting religion clubs should not be. Maybe they were pushing the religion clubs more than other clubs but you know what? My math teachers spent a lot more time trying to get people to join math team than trying to get people to join language clubs. If the groups are allowed to exist, and they should be, then teachers will promote whichever one or ones they feel most strongly about. Obviously, there is still a point where it becomes excessive, but the only thing in that article that sounds indisputably out of line is religion-oriented assignments for classes.

I think it's particularly odd that the event that caused this whole problem was a luncheon that didn't involve students in any way. If students aren't there, it doesn't really matter. If the teachers and boosters are predominantly the same religion and want to say grace or something, that's fine. Hell, if the teachers want to sacrifice a goat to Ba'al in the faculty lounge that's fine because students have no business in there anyway.

asbestos_pie wrote:

I think school should be about learning job skillz and not religious stuff. Schools these days tend to be support every religion that's not Christianity (Islam in particular) so I say get rid of all of the religious teachings. A lot of times schools teach using straw-man arguments, pre-conceived notions, and misconceptions of Christianity and don't really get into the actual religious beliefs. The thoughts of the Founding Fathers seem pretty contradictory on mixing government and religion so I don't know really what to think. I do think faith should be personal and people shouldn't be pressured to join a certain religion.

At the very least you have to teach the basic tenets of all religions in history class. It's impossible to teach a complete course in ancient history without having to cover religion. That doesn't mean it's an endorsement of any particular religion and there doesn't need to be an exceptional amount of depth, but religion played such an important part in history, particularly the ancient world, so it's really important to at least understand what their basic beliefs were.

RobotGumshoe wrote:

The first amendment guarantees people the rights that democracy needs to be a legitimate practice and not a dog and pony show for a dictator or an oligarch. People need the right to determine their thoughts and philosophy, to disseminate information freely, to be properly informed of the practices of the state, to be capable of assembling as a larger group as opposed to being isolated, and the right to address the state and be recognized. Most people in America are christians, so you may not get what the big deal is. But consider the religious clauses as the solemn promise of the state to not use the power of a divine mandate to endorse its own activities. You cannot argue with a man who is right by divine mandate, no matter where it comes from. Stalin had a divine mandate as much as Moses had, because a divine mandate is the absolute authority of morality and thought. Its an authority that a state or a person shouldn't have, lest they become tyrannies like (hate to pick the straw men but) the middle east or North Korea or the Soviet Union. Logic and rational discourse and compassion have brought humanity farther and helped more people than the collective dictates of every overrated mammal to have ever worn a crown or carried a holy relic. We should put effort into keeping people with agendas like this away from positions where they can forward them without reproach.

That's awesome and all, but you're just spouting rhetoric. Nothing you said addresses the actual events that took place in any way.

RobotGumshoe wrote:

Better response: The guy and his associates are probably good people, and have good intentions here. But its not so fun to be on the receiving end of evangelism and its an abuse of power to do so with a captive audience such as a school as well as a constitutional violation. So an injuction was filed, not a witch hunt, and the whole thing could have stopped there. The food blessing was a conscious act of defiance, either a testing of the waters to see if anyone would enforce the injunction, or an out an out challenge to the validity of the whole affair. He could have very well have chosen to spread the word at other times of the day when he wasn't at the school, and he could have chosen to teach the respect for law and for the beliefs of others when he was in school.

I do just want to reiterate that it really sounds like most of these things were either extracurricular activities (the clubs) or didn't involve the students (blessing the food). The religion based assignments could obviously be very, very inappropriate, but since this was clearly written from the standpoint of someone who found the entire thing appalling, including the harmless parts, it's possible that these assignments were legitimate history assignments that involved the study and understand of religion, and had nothing to do with indoctrination. I had plenty of assignments related to Greek mythology and no one would challenge them as being inappropriate even though they very much fit the description of "religion based assignments". I think we can all agree that preaching during class or forcing students to prayer and things of that nature are extremely inappropriate, but there's not enough evidence in the article to know whether or not what was happening was indeed inappropriate or not; it could very easily go either way.

Of course, this all goes to show how terrible the media is because they're far too concerned with slanting the article to make it sound like the behaviour was absolutely egregious rather than simply stating all the facts necessary for us to actually know what happened. Maybe all this news media would be better used to tell us what happened instead of trying to tell us what to think.