D
Dwyer
Guest
You are right when you state that public schools enforce the separation of church and state (a Constitutional interpretation which I don’t necessarily agree with in the way it has been applied to the ordinary lives of citizens of the United States).
However, I disagree when you write “[j]ust because a book is anti-religous or supports a religion you disagree with is not a reason in PUBLIC schools to pull a book or a poster.”
People are entrusting part of their childrens’ education, perhaps, mistakenly, the bulk of it, to America’s public schools.
When such schools ACTIVELY promote the reading of fictional stories that are patently morally offensive to the families and students of a segment of its student population, it should stop promoting the reading of such stories.
I can, in a way, prove that.
There was a school district in my state which had students sing as part of their education an old song, which may be a 19th Century minstrel song, I’m not certain of the songs origins, called “Pick A Barrel Of Cotton.”
In the song (a song which I was taught when I was child at public school as well), students were told by the teacher to jump around and make a large swooping motion with their hand and arm, while singing, as if they were picking a barrel of cotton. The song had one or two words, while not racist in themselves, like “Mamy,” which understandably African Americans could find find offensive.
Most of the schools in my area are economically racially segregated, so most of the schools contain either mainly white or black students.
Finally, with this community becoming more integrated over the years, the father of an African American student complained that the song shouldn’t be song. The school administrators reviewed the song, and while there was nothing necessarily racist in the song per se, they agreed that the song served no useful educational purpose, and withdrew it from the curriculum.
Schools are not obligated to buy copies of this book; schools are not obligated to place a poster in their libraries promoting this book.
Ask yourself the question: why this book among all other books in the world?? Why not Treasure Island, The Great Brain series, The Wizard of Oz series, or Frankenstein, Shakespeare, or Tom Sawyer, or works by Dickens or H.G. Wells?? Why dumb down the books our children read?? Why the low reading standards??
Tell me, was there a similar promotion by the school for either The Lord of The Rings or The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe??
Why don’t you check your school’s library; just tell me if they contain any works by Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Stalin or children’s versions of biographies with illustrations about these three men?? Are there any books about the American Communist Party, or extol life in the old Soviet Union, or about the English Labour Party or European socialism??
How about any books that teach economics or books by economists like the late John Kenneth Galbraith. See if there are any books about Walter Reuther, Eugene Debs, Samuel Gompers, or histories of American labor unions?? And are there any books about Satanism or Wicca, or Salomon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses or The Elders of the Protocols of Zion?? I’m just curious.
I think a poster displayed in a state run school is a government endorsement of the book and the ideas contained in the book.
While schools may enforce the separation of church and state, I certainly don’t believe, as a citizen, that they should perform an act, which is not a necessary act, especially such as posting a poster, which is thus a government promotion, of a book that contains what many consider to be an immoral, blasphemous story, and that is offensive to their religious beliefs.
It may be one thing if the library has the book in its collection; I think a poster though is an endorsement of the books and its ideas.
The average child, who sees that poster, probably thinks if my own school has a poster of the book, this must be a good or great work of writing and is something important and I should read it.
It is the goal of a pluralistic democracy to make certain that all of its citizens feel that they belong, according to custom, tradition, and reason.
Remember, Catholic men and women have fought and died for this country in all its wars, including Iraq, since its inception and have played a major role in it; we don’t need our state schools stabbing us in the back and mocking our faith while spending our property tax dollars on trashy stories.