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Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Indoctrination
Here's FRC head Tony Perkins protesting a restriction on federal money to schools:"What the government is saying" with this measure, Perkins asserts, is that "a private religious school cannot receive any of the money that might follow that student because [the government is] fearful that [the school] might indoctrinate students in religion." He sees this as just one example of the pronounced bias against religious schools arguably contained in the proposal.
"You might think of that coming out of a communist country -- out of Cuba -- but not out of the United States of America," the FRC president says. "And I think there's [cause for] greater concern over the indoctrination that takes place in our public school system, not in our religious schools," he adds.
Agape News also presents this item out of California:
...Last week the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Eklund v. Byron Union School District, a case in which several parents and children represented by the Thomas More Law Center challenged the school district's practice of teaching 12-year-old students to "become Muslims." The Law Center contends the actions of the school in question crossed a constitutional line to begin indoctrinating students, impermissibly placing them in the position of being trainees in Islam. For three weeks, the students were placed in Islamic city groups, took Islamic names, wore identification tags that displayed their new Islamic name along with the Muslim star and crescent moon symbols. As part of the exercise, the children received materials instructing them to "Remember Allah always," completed the "Five Pillars" of Islamic faith, and also memorized and recited the basmala, an Islamic phrase from the Koran, which they also wrote out on banners to be hung in the classroom. A federal district court judge in San Francisco had previously determined that the school district had not violated the Constitution of the United States with these activities. But according to Thomas More Law Center chief counsel Richard Thompson, "There is a double standard at play in this case. If the students had done similar activities in a class on Christianity, a constitutional violation would surely have been found." If the district's practice is upheld on appeal, Thompson says all public schools should begin teaching classes on Christianity in the same manner as the Islam class was taught in this case.
I'm sympathetic to the claims arising out of California. There's a fine line between teaching kids about Islam and teaching kids to be Muslim. The summary as presented certainly approaches indoctrination.
I'm sympathetic, of course, because I don't want my kids indoctrinated into any religion. Tony Perkins is arguing that his schools should be able to use federal money to indoctrinate kids into his faith. We don't have a uniform faith in this country. I doubt there's a school district in this country with uniformity of faith. That's but one of many good reasons not to use public money to indoctrinate children. (The best reason, of course, is that children ought not be indoctrinated into anything.)
