Religious music should not be sung by elementary school choirs

I will begin by refuting your points, then i will go on to state some of my own You said that Religious music should be allowed to be sung by elementary school choirs because... 1) Students do not have to participate if they don't want to, or their parents don't want to. 2) Our country is primarily christian and our country is based on christian values. 3) Schools would have to throw out all curriculum that has anything to do with religion 4) Schools could be segregated by religion instead of today's system First of all, If a child wants to sing in a school choir at all, he will most likely have to sing at all of the carol events, including those with religious music. In addition, the months leading up to the carol will include practicing the songs that they will be singing, including the religious ones. It is not fair to make students who want to sing, but don't want to be preaching someone else's religion make a choice like that. There is plenty of good, wholesome, non religious music that could be sung instead of church hymns or other such music. Secondly, you said that our country is 75% christian and our country is based on judeo-christian values. Though our country is also based on the simple need for separation between church and state, and especially in public schools we should not be making curriculum choices based on religion because of how many people in our country are one religion or the other. Also, this debate is not only about christian music. WHat about religious Jewish, Muslim, Hindi, or buddhist music? You have not thought of a single rebuttal for the fact that not all religious music is christian. Thirdly, we would not need to throw out all curriculum based on religion. Learning about the history of a religion, or a piece of artwork is not the same as preaching the religion to your peers and your parents. When you learn about religion in art work and history, you are simply learning to appreciate art and the learn about religions affect on history. But, when it comes to music, you are singing loud and clear to many people you know songs that have the words "jesus is our savior" or "the jews are the chosen people", which is not right for children, especially in a government regulated or operated school system Fourthly, we cannot and will never divide schools based on religion. That is back tracking 40 years and re-adopting segregation, except this time the original constitution clearly says that there will be a separation between church and state. I hope that i will never see the day when my children are sent to a school across town because they are jewish and most of my home town is not. Now, i will like to move on to some of my own points. Firstly, There is absolutely no reason not to ban this unconstitutional practice. It is unethical to have a young child preach a religion to their peers that they themselves have no religious affiliation with. And, there are thousands of songs out there, why to we have to use music that offends people or forces children to decide between the joy of singing, and preaching a different religion from theirs. There is absolutely no benefit to keeping this music in schools, and that is why i think i will win this debate. Thank you for debating me.