by Patricia Gilliam

Created on: January 02, 2008   Last Updated: January 19, 2009

When I was in sixth grade in a public school, our social studies class was taught for nine whole weeks a series on world languages and cultures. Part of it included detailed religious-themed material...only it was about India and China's religions. The Bible equivalent of what we were taught about those religions would've been the entire story of Jesus, but I imagine that would not have gone over as well in the "politically correct" environment of our school system.

The sad thing was out of that entire nine week course, Christianity was completely danced around and ignored as a world religion in a classroom where the students were predominately Christian. It was an example of a double-standard of "diversity training" taken to the point of absurd-we were being taught aspects of other country's religions in a school where telling a child about Jesus could get a teacher fired!

Unlike that situation, what I think would be reasonable would not be forcing anything on anybody. Instead, courses in the Bible would make great electives parallel to Humanities or History courses in high schools. Schools could based the decision to offer them by demands of the community-sending out a letter to parents to check their child's interest in the course if it were offered and explain that the courses are not required. I also wouldn't have a problem if other electives of other religions were offered as well for students of other faiths to study their histories. The important thing is all courses are done only with the permission of parents to avoid any conflict.

I think a major issue in public schools today is there is no sense of community anymore. What used to be an exchange of ideas of students with different perspectives (that still respected each other) has turned into everyone walking on eggshells trying not to say anything the slightest bit offensive. I don't see how this prepares a person for the real world. No matter what religion you are, you're going to run into people different from you just living life. I think as a society we'd all get along better if as children we were just shown everything for what it is-letting us know it's perfectly okay to believe what we believe but not everyone will always agree with us.

With Christian children in public schools, currently there's often a message being taught that you have to be silent about God and Jesus when everyone else can speak up about what they believe. The whole idea that for other religions to get respect that Christianity has to be suppressed is the wrong approach to the issue. (That's like having the philosophy that for women to succeed, men have to fail. It degrades both sides.)

We need to start working as a society for win-win situations in our schools and our culture in general if anything is ever going to change for the better. That's not going to happen overnight, but giving students more freedom to learn would be a great start.

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