Katherine Stewart -- The good news club
=========================================

Stewart explains several ways which are used to maneuver past the
requirements for separation of church and state in public schools.
One is to claim that are educational or some form of historical
study and bible study, and is not proselytizing or an attempt to
convert school children to a different faith.  Another is to use
"peer-to-peer evangelism", having students apply pressure on their
friends and classmates rather than involve parents and adults,
directly.  And, yet another is to claim that children who are *not*
allowed to profess or promote their faith are having their right to
free speech taken away.  This last approach seems to be the one
accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2001 case of "Good news
Club v. Milford Central School", which apparently accepted the idea
that teaching and promoting religious ideas and beliefs are a
protected free speech right and opened the door fairly broadly
broadly to religious activities in public schools using public
school facilities.  You can learn more about the Milford decision
here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_News_Club_v._Milford_Central_School

And, because Texas often manages to be more entertaining than most,
don't pass up a chance to read the chapter on the Texas Board of
Education and there battles to ensure a Christian slant in school
text books.  Oh, where is Molly Ivins when we need her.  Actually,
as you might expect, Ivins *did* have something to say about this:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins/molly-ivins-july-14.html

The sections on the attempts to inject religious beliefs, prayers,
etc. into sports seem especially troubling.  I'm guessing that young
athletes, especially those involved in team sports are quite
susceptible to pressure from their peers; that's just team spirit
looked at from a different angle.  I also suspect that student
athletes who are influenced by Christianity (and we are talking
specifically about the Christian religion here in the U.S.) often,
most often, grow up to be better because of religious up-bringing.
One of the valuable aspects of this book is that Stewart encourages
us to confront and think about the question of whether we want that
social pressure applied to children and teenagers.

So, is this invasion of our public schools something that we should
be worried about?  Stewart certainly is trying to convince us that
it is.  I'm someone who feels that teaching or raising children to
be a believer in *any* religion can be thought of as a form of child
abuse, so I should be very worried.  However, in the U.S. we have so
many religious believers (the number of believers in fundamentalist,
literal interpretations of the Christian bible, especially) that
attempting to infiltrate the public schools to produce more of them
hardly seems necessary.  And, I suppose that I believe that if you
are not capable of seeing through and rejecting a religion after
having been brought up in it, then there is not too much hope that
you will break out of the confines imposed by those around you.
Some grow up to escape that social pressure and those religious
beliefs; some grow up without them but fall into it.  I do not know
how to prevent or cure alcoholism and I don't have a cure for
religion either.  You can even argue that it's a good growth
experience to be subjected to social pressures of the kind that
Stewart discusses while you are young so that you can learn to
resist them.  Again, one of the valuable aspects of this book is
that if encourages us to think through this and related issues.

"This problem could be easily solved if everyone accepted *my*
religion."  And, that's the point.

And, a few personal rants ...

I *still* believe that it's criminal to give parents, or anyone
else, the power to warp and twist the minds of the young.

I empathize with Stewart: promotion of rigid, fundamentalist,
anti-science (or at the least, non-science) beliefs is bad for us
all.

Faith and beliefs for which we do not have evidence is foolish.
Worse yet, it encourages those who do it to believe other silly
things, even when not tied to their religion.

But, perhaps it's futile to attempt to protect the foolish from
their own foolishness.

It's an attempt to impose one's religious beliefs on others.  I'm
annoyed when they show up at my front door and try to do it to me.
When they do it to the young and impressionable, I'm horrified.

By the way, what happened to the "never trust authority" strain in
our society.  I don't believe that today's youth are so weak minded
that they believe any foolishness sent their way.  Can that really
be true in our "ironic" age?  You would think that the massive
amount of advertising and scams sent our way and huge amount of
foolishness we read on the World Wide Web would inoculate us with a
strong sense of skepticism.

The Good News Clubs are promoting a literal interpretation of the
Holy Christian Bible, a book that has weird and unreliable origins
and that has been changed over and over to fit the needs of the
times.  How believable can a *literal* interpretation possibly be.
It must be believable I suppose, given the number of people in the
U.S. who own up to doing so.

03/26/2015

.. vim:ft=rst:fo+=a: