[Vision2020] Religion in schools...

[Don Kaag]

Visionaries:

A bit of clarification on religion in the public schools.

It is not illegal to teach about the various branches of Christianity, 
Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, etc. in the school system.  It is 
illegal to teach any of them as advocacy of a particular religion.

Teaching American Government would be difficult without mentioning the 
Judeo/Christian basis of the legal system, and World History would be 
tough as well without mentioning the effects of religion on the world.  
How would you explain the Crusades, for example?  Cultural Geography 
must talk about religion in order to teach about various cultures' 
world views.

Our public school system here in Moscow has Bibles and other religious 
texts on the shelves in the libraries as reference books.  We just do 
not teach the ascendency of one religion over  another.

When I was teaching at the junior high school, I noticed that the only 
religious texts in the library were the Revised Standard Bible and the 
Book of Mormon.  I then went to friends in the local Jewish and Islamic 
communities and obtained copies of the Jerusalem Bible (Hebrew/English) 
and the Koran (Arabic/English), and donated them to the school to add 
to their collection.  I was unable to find copies of the Analects of 
Confucious, the Sayings of his disciple Mencius,  and the Bhagavad 
Gita, and my worn paperback copies were inappropriate for donation, but 
I am sure that if anyone has access to good Mandrin/English and 
Hindu/English hard cover copies, they would be a welcome addition.

Regards,

Don Kaag