Hint: It’s a cold war not the shout show drivel that gets headlines this time of year. In this week’s School of Thought at TIME I look at the poor job we do teaching about religion in schools. And whether you’re a believer or not that’s a problem because religion shapes our world. Public schools can teach about it, too, without doing violence to the First Amendment.
It’s a holiday ritual as predictable as Santa showing up at your local mall: overheated rhetoric about the “War on Christmas.” A lowlight this year was a feature on The O’Reilly Factor about a letter from the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union urging school districts to make holiday celebrations inclusive. Through O’Reilly’s prism, the letter — quoted selectively — was an attempt to squelch Christmas. In reality, the letter just asked school districts to avoid celebrations focusing exclusively on a single religion. It was more common sense than state-coerced atheism.
Unfortunately, once you cut through the blather on cable news, there is a real, if much less discussed, problem in that public schools are skittish about teaching much about religion…
And if you want even more ‘war on Christmas’ in your stocking Kevin Huffman has more here.
Good column. My own children’s high school teaches a challenging Humanities course (1 year, 2 periods/day) in which they read the Bible and other religious texts in a historic and cultural context.