Public Schools and the Inevitability of Religious Inequality

[richard duncan]

Sandy writes:>
> My first response isn't "that's tough," but, rather, I want to see the
> evidence that this incident actually occurred.  To begin with, I'm
> suspicious of any story starring a young lad named "Timmy."  (I don't know
> if Christianity Today is a particularly reliable source.  Maybe they, like
> the New Yorker, are famous for their fact checkers.  But maybe not.)  I also
> wonder, in this day and age, about a teacher who would so blithely enter the
> thicket of controversy by grading as described.  I recognize that the
> incident might have happened.  This is a large country, and we know that
> anything that doesn't violate the laws of physics is likely in fact to
> happen, at least once, somewhere in the good old U.S. of A.  But until there
> is greater specification, mark me down as a skeptic.
> ___________________

Sandy, you caught me. The story in CT refers to the boy as "Tim;" I
dubbed the lad "Timmy" for aesthetic reasons. The story appears in
Chuck Colson's column, at p. 72, of the 8/11/1997 issue of CT.

I don't know what you think of Colson; I admire him greatly and doubt
that he would intentionally lie or manufacture a story. He claims that
Tim[my]'s mom is a family friend (she's in a Bible study with Mrs.
Colson).

These kind of cases happen all the time in public schools (not every
day in every school, but quite often in some public school somewhere).
It is no more bizarre than Mike Paulsen's case (the case of the
kid--not Timmy--who wanted to write an essay on Jesus) or than the
recent case in the news about the school that banned rosary beads as
gang attire. Until someone gives me reason to doubt Chuck Colson's
competence or integrity (I know about his watergate conviction--in
fact, Colson's book Born Again is a great story of his life before and
after Watergate), I'll believe Colson.
--
                   ----------
             Rick Duncan (rduncan at unlinfo.unl.edu)

"There's no pleasure on earth that's worth sacrificing for the sake of
an extra five years in the geriatric ward of the Sunset Old People's
Home, Weston-Super-Mare." Horace Rumpole