Religious Holidays in Public Schools

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by SassyLeo

I was listening to OPB (NPR) today and they had a segment on school holidays. In NY, there is a large Muslim population and they seek to add 2 of the Muslim holidays to the school calendar.

Apparently the city schools already have Jewish holidays (my schools did not, so I went to school) in addition to the "traditional" Christian holidays.

They have 11 observed holidays on the school calendar and none are Muslim - or any other religion aside from Jewish & Christian.

What do you think?

Hi Sassy!

I read the article that you linked us to. One of the things I found interesting was how they framed the message - kind of like a dichotomy, two sided story (re: the choice between religion and school).

I think the issue, as it's framed in the article, seems problematic by nature in that, to me, preference for type of education or religion seems to be two separate subjects and to me, again, it's hard to integrate that particular stream of thought in productive ways that enhances life for those who dwell in particular communities.

I wonder if there are any social models out there (maybe in Europe?) that address community needs in a way that allow members of the community to set up a way for the school year that plans for and incorporates holiday time to observe particular religious/spiritual practices?

I don't know how feasible it is, but I wonder if at a district level (for instance, like here in the PDX metro area), schools could have the power to amend or adopt or set up a particular schedule that meets the needs of members of the community that access shared set of resources and sets of social/religious beliefs???

I think the conversation concerning your article reflects the many ways the social dilemmas that communities face, as communities become more diverse: for example, social policy that's currently utilized anywhere is a herculian task to address- due to variances of particular cultures clustering in communities in any place you could throw a dart on the map. I think one of the things that makes it hard to unravel or problem solve this issue is that we (the general "we") tend to want to distill issues into singular equations that are simpler to solve and it's usually pretty difficult to reduce it to those particular terms because of the social complexity that makes up each type of community.

I don't know if what I've written about seems helpful (I'm not fully awake yet either) but it's what came to my mind in thinking about your article and I hope it adds to the conversation here!

ps/ I couldn't vote on your poll either because the options seem to not have a wide enough range for me to participate - so my post here is in lieu of a poll vote as "other" but not how it's framed in the poll.