From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: "Keep Christ in Christmas"
Date: 14 Dec 92 15:16:39 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1992Dec9.193907.18048@raven.alaska.edu> fsrey@trantor.acf-lab.alas
ka.edu (Rex E. Young) writes in part:
>
>I do take offense to the rising tide of extreme Christians attempting
>to put their majority on school boards.  As mr. 'jc' said in his 
>posting, this is dangerous, and must be countered.  I would pull my
>children from school and teach them at home before I would allow
>people with such narrow beliefs dictate how my children would be
>educated.  (That's hypothetical, as I have no children.)  Is there
>any organization right now that's openly opposing the rise of these
>Christians in school boards?  I live in Fairbanks, Ak. and don't see
>much of what goes on in the states except for what I read in the 
>newspapers, and I fear that much of that is slanted, and don't 
>necessarily take it seriously.
>
>--Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
>                       -Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want to oppose the "rise" of Christians on school boards,
shouldn't you also by right oppose any similar rise of atheists -
or extreme anythingists?

To use the contemporary liberal wisdom, I suppose that the represen-
tation should exactly mirror the beliefs of the population.  This
would be, again according to the Wisdom of the Moment, the only way 
to fairly represent the views of the population.  How would such
a poll have worked out in New England in 1790? In 1992? And what
about ten years from now?

This is why we agree on one thing -- both of us would remove our
children from the public schools and teach them at home before sending
them to people "such narrow beliefs to dictate how my children
should be educated".  It is just the narrowness of the public schools
that keeps me sending my kids to private schools. Fortunately, though
we are not rich, we can scrape together the tuition by making sacrifices.
But we also would home school our kids before sending them to public 
school.  I might add that if the public schools became, say, fundamentalist 
or Bahai we would do the same.  And if my own church decided to try to
take over the school system I would immediately start reassessing my
relationship to that church.

Sounds like we need a system of choice so that parents can make their
own judgement about what is extreme and what is healthy and what is
dictatorial and what is reasonable pedagogy.  As a middle class family
we are able to exercise choice on top of paying a heavy tax load for
schools we don't use.  Unfortunately people lower on the scale than we
have a tougher time of it and are compelled to send their kids to the
public schools with whatever board happens to be running them at the time.

Though I am a Christian, and I disagree with the Weltanschauung and 
pedagogical methods of modern public education, I have no objection
to your sending your kids to a school that I wouldn't send mine too,
even a militantly atheistic school, and that on public tax monies -
i.e. vouchers. The same is true for a Bahai or (gulp) a fundamentalist.

By the way, be careful when you quote Emerson.  As a universalist and 
transcendentalist and a Unitarian clergyman, he  harbored beliefs that any
self respecting atheist should regard as highly suspect. The cosmos 
forbid that a majority of people holding such views should ever take 
over our school boards.  In fact, I wonder whether anyone has investigated
removing his books from school reading lists and library shelves on grounds
of the separation clause of the first ammendment?  At least we could 
censor out the offending passages.

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)