what should i do about my sons public school forceing chirstian ideas on him?

Question

i was horrifide this spring when i opened my sons folder and saw a paper intitled "the real reason for easter" his teacher made him write "jesus died on the cross for our sins" well that pissed me off i am wiccian now i don't dress in robes and flaunt it around but i do belive in my Goddess. with out causeing a big todo and hopefully with out makeing the news what should i do about teachers assumeing everyone is like them and christian?

Answer 1

Send a sealed letter to her through your son or arrange a parent-teacher conference. Rationally tell her, like you did here, exactly how you feel. Don't dwell on it, just ask if she could be a little more sensitive on this issue in the future. If she refuses or starts to get in your face, calmly tell her that because she is unable to address this issue civilly, you will arrange to have a meeting with her and the school principal. Thank her for her time and then walk out if you are meeting in person. If you are on the phone, thank her and then hang up. Then, call the main office and set up an appointment to meet with the teacher and the principal.

If the teacher agrees to your request without any hoopla, thank her and then move on. If you notice any further infractions, talk to her about it calmly. If she is just placating you and then doing what she wants, make an appointment with the principal.

Avoid negative discourse and you'll save yourself some nasty hassles.

Answer 2

Wow! Such a conflarigation of responses. And Christians telling you to take your child out of school and do home schooling? I always was under the impression that if you wanted a child to have a religious education you sent them to parochial schools. The Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, they all have primary and secondary schools. "Jesus died on the cross" is fine, The Romans killed many people that way. It was a popular way to torture and kill those who rebelled against the empire. Though I don't think she was teaching Roman History at the time. "For our sins." is where she crossed (snicker) the line. Was she teaching a lesson on national holidays? If so, she needed to stick to the secular version and not the religious. Is she a new teacher, 1st, 2nd year? Are there Muslim, Hindu or American Indian children in the class? (In response to an earlier comment, the American Indian was here first, and the "Christians" totally trampled them into Mother Earth, what kind of religious freedom was that?) You can suggest that because of the current uproar about religion maybe some lesson plans need to be "rearranged?" So many variables are here. Speak with the teacher with confidence. Don't jump down their throat. New teachers don't always realize the implications and older teachers tend to use the techniques of their younger teaching days. If you can't get an aplogetic oops from this teacher, go to the principal. At some point you will need to talk to your son and see how he felt about being instructed in this manner? Did it cause him conflict, because the teacher is a symbol of authority to the very young. I'm sure you know your child's responses. This is a sticky situation. Bless You.

Answer 3

First - know that you're probably not the only parent that was shocked or offended to find such a blatant teaching of Christianity in a public school. It's not just you and your son you're standing up for.

I agree with other posters that the issue should first be addressed with the teacher, but I would file a formal complaint with the principal as well, and explain to the teacher that a complaint was filed. Make sure that both the teacher and the principal know that you don't want to make a public issue of the event, and that you'll file a formal complaint with the school board should any harassment or further religious instruction take place.

If you're interested in making some kind of reparation - suggest that the school look into a religious studies course where the beliefs of several religions are discussed. (These kind of courses are not conversion bent, but rather instructional and often require parental consent.) Or, ask the teacher if she would be willing to have you come in and talk about the Pagan significance of Easter, Christmas, etc... After all, they were Pagan holidays first. *smiles*

Answer 4

Well, as a teacher, and a Christian, I can answer this for you from both sides.

First, tell the teacher to get the facts straight. Easter celebrates Christ's resurrection, not his death!!!!!

Second, if the paper is not intended to promote Christianity, but to discuss Easter in a societal matter - having him write the correct answers is not wrong. If you son wrote an answer that did not include Christ's resurrection, then your son did not get the real reason correct. All the traditions surrounding Easter are not why Easter exists.

It does not matter what your beliefs are - answering a question does not challenge your beliefs - neither does the teacher having your son write an answer to correctly respond.

Your beliefs should only give you reason to substantiate you faith as you are able to. While I don't agree with your beliefs in your goddess, unless you can prove that Easter has something else than Christ's resurrection, you should not be overly upset in the teacher - based on what you have stated

Answer 5

Set up a meeting with the school principal and explain that, outside of the context of a comparative religion study, the subject of religion really has no place in your son's curriculum.

I would not even bring your own religious beliefs into it--1) it's none of their business 2) it has no bearing on the inappropriatness of how this teacher addressed the subject matter.

Get assurances from the principal that he/she will handle the matter and that there will be no further occurrances.

I'm going to take a gentle jab here and note my surprise that a practicing 'wiccan'/goddess-worshiper is apparently unaware that Easter originates from pre-Christian goddess worship. Christianity co-opted existing practices. Easter and it's secular celebration (Bunnies, eggs, etc) actually pre-dates Christianity by quite a bit. If you would like more information about this, a web-search on "Pagan origins of Easter" or similar will yield good results.

Answer 6

I read all of the posts previous to mine. I believe religion- of any kind has no place in the public school system. Making children pledge allegiance is already a travesty; a society that claims to be the most democratic and free to have ever existed on the face of the earth forcing young impressionable minds to recite a pledge to political and religious ideas reinforces a nazi like mentality, not freedom. The only 2 societies I can think of (at least in the western world) which forced young children to swear oaths of allegience was Nazi Germany and The Soviet Union (as well as some of it's sattelite states). What this teacher is doing is no more than brainwashing children that aren't his, to believe in his religious propaganda. Sure, if the topic is Easter, he could explain the historical significance of how easter evolved, however even here he would be flawed; I'm sure he is not aware of the pagan origins of Easter, christmas and the other so called "christian" holidays, which as a Wiccan, I'm sure you're aware of. Easter was originally "Ostara" in northern europe, celebrating the spring equinox, and this is where bunnies and eggs became associated with this holiday. Likewise christmas is actually the winter solstice, or yuletide , as well as all the christmas symbols: I mean come on, pine trees in the ancient middle east? The reason the early christian church incorporated so many pagan ideas, essentially recycled all the pagan holidays, is to gain mass conversions, when they noticed that they were still in no position to do brutally forced conversions, which would'nt work on a mass scale in a short time. (of course once they brainwashed all the European peoples, and centuries later when the European exploration of the world began, they could employ brutal conversion tactics against the poor native peoples of whatever parts of the world they came in contact with, using European armies)
Most of the people who posted i would agree with, you could take legal action if this thing escalated, and the school system doesn't budge, however all the religious fascists come out of the wood work too, noticing from the previous posts. Like so many "good christians" I met before, they're up in arms about you and you and your beliefs, and in a typical fashion they're all resorting to spiritual threats about you and your son going to hell, even though they cannot have any idea of what the afterlife is like, the Bible is not a very good source of accurate history, and no, contrary to all the fairytales, it is not divinely inspired. As long as this sort of mentality prevades in this country, we won't have real freedom, and we will have to put up with such people in the public shool system, and if this continues to escalate, fairly soon the US will not be the futuristic, progressive, free, and tolerant utopia that so many genius writers and progressive visionaries imagined in the past, but a medieval fiefdom ruled by right wing conservative fanatics, complete with inquisitions and even witch burnings; sadly were headed in this latter direction more and more everyday than the former direction.

Answer 7

There are two parts to the solution. The first one is providing your son with the knowledge and experience that there are many forms of spiritual worship, that have developed over time. Christianity is one, Wicca is another - so are Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and many, many others. This is a great opportunity to begin a dialogue with him on this. Perhaps you could make a "project' out of finding out about the different religions in your area and attending services together and then comparing them afterwards.
The second one is impressing upon the entire school administration - all the teachers, the principal & deans, the assistants, the trainees, etc - the same information. There are many forms of worship - they are ALL deserving of respect and NO ONE has the right to impose their personal predelictions on anyone's elses children. How you want to approach that is up to you. You may find it less threatening to get together with other parents of other religions as well as Christian parents that believe in personal religious experience as opposed to rigid dogma, and present your views on the need for respect and tolerance at a teachers meeting. (Your school calendar should have those dates noted.) Please be sure to bring the paper from your sons folder - that is your hard evidence.

Answer 8

I would suggest that you set up a meeting with your son's teacher. There must be a reasonble explanation. Public schools, while allowed to teach various religions in a historical context, are not allowed to teach/preach a specific religion as something that is right or wrong.
If the teacher does not give youa suitable answer I would suggest goign to the principal followed by the school board if things have not been resovled.

Answer 9

Send him to a private school.

Our country was based on 'In God We Trust', we are a land of Christians. Our Constitution provides freedom of religion for everyone. It is so sad that our schools, even our businesses, have to make consessions for the immigrants or others who decide to follow other paths while still in our country. Religion is seperate from State, I realize that. However, since the Pledge of Allegiance has been removed from our schools, Nativity scenes no longer allowed in front of our businessess, it is now time to take back our country!
When in America we have to press the number 1 for English...there is definitely something wrong with this picture. Folks started with the Nativity scene at Christmas, organizations want 'In God We Trust' removed from our money, what next.

If there are those folks who don't like our freedoms, then go back where you came from, don't try and remake America.

Americans have had enough and have been pushed too far. Its time to fight back, and if this means start again with our schools and our young folk, who by the way were parented by previous Americans who didn't mind hearing about Jesus in our lives.

Or if not a private school, home school. Our young deserve the best and their parents did and their grandparents and so on.

Answer 10

You have a lot of great responses here so I will keep mine short:

Forcing any religious belief upon a person in a public school is a violation of your child's constitutional rights.

I would gather as much documentation as you can to assert your claim.

I would then discuss it with the teacher(s) in question and alert the principal of the school about your concerns. I would also ask him/her to (in writing) document that this will not happen again.

If that does not solve the problem, you should contact your local school board, your local representative of Congress and the ACLU. They can help you if you feel the need to progress this into a legal forum.