All About You Unless You’re Religious

From Worldnetdaily:

The classroom assignment was called “All About Me,” and was intended to provide an opportunity for children to “identify individual interests and learn about others,” the ADF said. The activity at the school – which lists an unspecified “religious holiday” in September but a “winter recess” in December – allowed students to talk about their interests through the use of their favorite stuffed animals, posters, snacks and games and books.

The brief noted that the school allowed discussion of religion in the “All About Me” assignment. “Because Wesley liked to go to church, he created a poster that included a picture of a church with the words, ‘I like to go to church’ below it. This poster was displayed on the wall.”

But the Bible reading Wesley requested was rejected because the Bible promotes “a specific religious point of view” and the teacher instead suggested Wesley’s mother “read a book ‘about witches and Halloween’ instead.”

When his turn came, Culbertson Elementary student Wesley Busch asked his mother to read from his favorite book, the Bible. But the ADF said school officials told Donna Kay Busch that the school viewed the Bible as “proselytizing” and as “promoting a specific religious point of view,” banning it from the class.

There are quite a few questions to ask here. First of all, would a Muslim kid wanting to talk about Mohammad or the Qu’ran get the same treatment? The statement, “go read about witches and Halloween” is pretty insensitive overall.

Secondly, was the Bible story specifically prosletyzing, or did the teacher and the district just assume that every story in the Bible prosletyzes for Christianity? There are many absolutely cool stories from the Bible that in themselves don’t really prosletyze like David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, etc. Or were the administrators like most Americans so completely ignorant of the Bible that they just assumed anything in there was prosletyzing. There’s of course a far more fundamental problem here, though.

While the focus of the story heretofore has been on what was allowed in the given activity, what exactly are kids learning from the activity by doing reports and drawings about oneself. Are they being prepared for life? Further education? Reading a Bible story and actually hearing about one portion of the greatest best-seller of all times may be the most truly educational thing to come out of this experience. Instead, we have teachers suggesting books on witches and halloween, which if not harmful are certainly banal and mind-numbing rather than enlightening. Maybe, it’s time for schools that educate.

I think of local Christian School, Covenant Academy which in Kindergarten teaches Bible Survey I, Basic History, Reading, Writing, basic math, and an overview of science, and I think that perhaps our schools need more of this and less of nonsensical self-actualizing bunk.

(Hat Tip: Idaho Values Alliance.)