jcp@osiris.UUCP (Jody Patilla) (03/10/85)
Recently several articles have appeared championing Christian education in the public schools and in fact, a Christian goverment altogether. This distresses me greatly, as it reminds me of unfortunate childhood experiences which I'm sure others have shared. I was raised a Catholic in an area where there were very few - the great majority of people were Baptists or Methodists. There were no Jews at all, so that the usual "baby-eating" stories got tacked onto the Catholics instead, in lieu of any other scapegoat. When I was in first grade (this was before Mrs. O'Hare), my well-meaning teacher thought to have us learn prayers and psalms in class every day. For those who are not aware, the version of the Lord's Prayer, the Pater Noster, that RC's say is not the same as the Protestant version. Also, the psalms are numbered differently, and there are other small differences in the organisation of the Old Testament. I was faced with an abysmal choice for a six year old - do I say the prayer and stop at the usual Catholic stopping point, thus subjecting myself to particular disapprobation from my teacher and Protestant classmates (children can be hideously cruel), or should I say the whole thing, and go against everything I had been taught, or do I not say it at all and get hauled into the principal's office ? And I'm a Christian, for goodness sake ! What if I had been Jewish, or (like many Vietnamese refugees now) Buddhist ? *This* is the problem with prayer in school. Please bear in mind that prayer in school is not banned - individuals can pray all they want to, individually. But the school itself cannot ask or force children to pray. ANd I say this is a good thing. It is terribly wrong to put children in the position I was in, to make them conform or to ostracise them for not conforming. There's enough of that going on without adding religious differences as well. The government of this country was established very deliberately to be secular in nature. The drafters of the Constitution knew all too well the problems with state religions, and the head of state being the head of the official religion. Queen Elizabeth may be the Defender of the Faith, but Ronald Reagan, despite remarks to the countrary, is most definitely not. I find it very distressing, and a threat to my personal freedom of worship, to worship the God or gods or trees of my choice, that other people seem to think that this is an ordained Christian nation, period. I wholly endorse your right to practise any religion you so choose, but you *cannot* in any way impose that religion on me, and that is exactly what allowing religion in the public schools will do. -- jcpatilla "'Get stuffed !', the Harlequin replied ..."