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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (2271)	10/12/2000 7:32:16 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10042

I am extremely sensitive to the beliefs of the children in my class. One little girl told me she would not be attending our Halloween party. So I called her mother, to find out if the objection was religious. Since it was- I asked her mother if a Fall Party would be a problem. She really appreciated my consideration, apparently her little girl had been staying home on Halloween for 4 years because of this. But it was an easy accommodation. I sent a note home asking for decorations from all volunteers to be fall leaves and pumpkins- not jack-o-lanterns and witches and ghosts and such. We should try to be tolerant and respectful of everyone in school, imo. That means leaving religious ideas, and religious celebrations (or anti-religious - as in the case of Halloween) out of the class room. We have Hindus and Buddhists and Jews and Christians and several other faiths attending our schools. We have a Fall party, a Winter break festival, a Spring celebration, and an end of the year party. These offend no one, and it's lovely that everyone can participate. The absence of belief, is not interference with belief. It is merely leaving the space for all children to carry their beliefs safely with them as they learn the basics of math, science, social studies and English. Since I have the children of happy fundamentalist parents in my class, and they know exactly what is going on since they volunteer, I don't know why anyone would want to homeschool- except to provide a faith based curriculum. And the home schoolers I know are doing just that. They are getting religious curriculum that include religion in every subject area. That is, of course, their right- but there is no way the public schools could satisfy them as we are mandated to establish no state religion. Nor, I think, do the majority of our citizens wish government to get into the religion business.