Religious endorsement in schools

[Harold Hallikainen]

On Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:51:34 -0800 "Teresa S. Collett"
<teresa.s.collett.1 at ND.EDU> writes:
>, I too thought such expressions should be prohibited
>until
>teaching a high school Sunday School class a few years ago.  I asked
>the
>students to answer two questions:  1) Atoms exist as a small component
>of
>all matter; is this a statement of fact or opinion?, and 2)God exists;
>is
>this a statement of fact or opinion? Not surprisingly, the students
>classified the first statement as a statement of fact,and the second
>as a
>statement of opinion.
>
>        Finally one student said he believed in atoms because he was
>taught
>about them in school, and he was not taught about God in school.  He
>reasoned that with sex education, driver's ed, and the more academic
>curriculum, anything that was true and useful was taught in the
>school.
>Anything that was not true or was not useful was not.  Therefore he
>argued
>that God's existance must either be something we are uncertain about
>or we
>don't beleive that it is sufficiently useful to require discussion of
>it in
>school.

        How had this student done in his government classes?  Instead of
"bending the rules" to allow teaching of religion in school, how about
teaching students why we do NOT teach religion in schools?  It's NOT that
it isn't important, but that it is a very personal matter that we don't
want the government involved with.

Harold