quote: Students at public elementary schools in Staunton, Va., can continue to take weekly Bible lessons at a church in the middle of the day, the local School Board has decided, although it left open the door to review its decision next year.
The 5 to 1 decision Monday night was a compromise crafted to satisfy parents who want their children released from school for the 30-minute religious classes and those who do not want their children waiting idly until their classmates return or stigmatized for staying behind.
The board authorized the midday release program for the upcoming school year but promised to provide "educationally meaningful opportunities" for students who do not attend and to send teachers to workshops to develop instructional techniques for the period. It also said it would revisit the issue in a year.
"I want everybody to feel free to be where they want to be, to benefit from that time and to have families feel like their interests are properly taken care of by the schools," said James Harrington, the School Board president and a professor of education at Mary Baldwin College.
The weekday Bible classes attended by more than 80 percent of the district's first-, second- and third-grade students have been an emotional issue in this Shenandoah Valley town, which has 24,000 residents and 75 churches. Though the classes have been held for more than 60 years, several dozen parents sought this year to end the tradition. They said children who did not attend had to defend their beliefs and were deprived of meaningful class work because nothing new could be introduced when most of the students were absent.
Staunton is one of about 20 localities in Virginia, most along the Interstate 81 corridor, that release public school students from classes during the school day for religious instruction in nearby churches or trailers. U.S. Supreme Court decisions have endorsed the practice known as Weekday Religious Education, or WRE, as long as classes are held off school premises.
This is one of those policies I think is a terrible idea but not unconstitutional. Terrible from an efficiency/management standpoint, and completely unnecessary. If they want to reduce the school week by a half hour for any kind of private instruction, do it at the start or end of the day (Friday afternoon?) and don't make 20% of the students twiddle their thumbs.
posted
I agree. Our schools had this while I was in elementary school. The 25 kids out of a class of thirty who were Catholic went to catechism class every Thursday afternoon. The five of us who were left could either read quietly at our desks, play checkers or other games, or help the teacher re-do the bulletin boards. We weren't allowed to learn anything new, since most of the class would miss it.
Edit: and ours was an hour and a half. Basically from a half-hour after lunch until a half hour before school was over.
[ February 16, 2005, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: ghost of dkw ]
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posted
My mom says when she was growing up, Baptist kids went to one class, Catholic kids went to another, and other kids had study hall. It was the last class of the day, so there weren't problems with letting kids off campus.
Personally, I wouldn't mind having my teenagers able to go to Seminary on release time instead of getting up so early; I won't be taking them, that's for sure, and if they're anything like me, it will be a struggle to get them to go. The only problem is that currently, the only places I know of that do it are in Utah and northern Arizona, neither of which is a place I really want to live.
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posted
For those who don't know what Ketch is talking about, this religion-class thing is actually very common at high schools in the Mormon Corridor (Idaho, Utah, Arizona). Basically, Mormon kids are allowed to leave campus during a period of their normal high school instruction to attend a Mormon scripture-study class (called Seminary) in a nearby building.
Mormon students outside the Mormon Corridor take the same classes, but they do it early in the morning before school, or (in cases where early-morning classes are impossible) on their own time as independent study.
posted
Thanks for explaining, Puppy. I grew up in a high-LDS-saturation community, I forget that others don't know the lingo sometimes, even though I'm a convert. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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