Southern Public Schools

Recently there have been numerous reports about public schools being sued by the ACLU for some reason or another. Many of them, rightly so. There will always be the school districts that believe a simple prayer, Christian tabling session, or a Jesus rally won't hurt anyone. What's the big deal, right?

Here's the big deal:

In middle school I had a history teacher, 'Mr. White'. He was an amazing teacher. He kept us tweens interested in history. Good for him! Middle school kids are the worst. The only problem with Mr. White was that he would frequently interject his religion into his lesson. He always had his bible in class with him. And, he would get very passionate about telling us to read it. No one questioned him about it and no one seemed to have a problem with it. I didn't because, at the time, I was pretty religious. (About as religious as a pre-teen outcast could be.)  But, if anyone in that room wasn't Christian...I can see how it would have been a very frustrating thing... Mr. White was cool. Going against him was social suicide.

In high school, when I was starting to develop my own ideas about morals and what was right, I started to get a tad more lippy about my ideals. This didn't really get me into trouble with the school but, more so with other students. In homeroom I was asked by my teacher to participate in another student's psychological survey. The student said it was for a class although she may have been asking for a pro-life after school club. I can't think of why else she would be asking the following question- and only this one question: Would you ever get an abortion? My only answer was 'maybe'. You would have thought I had set a bomb off in the room. Gasps were widespread. Jaws were dropped. My sister was the most annoyed with me: 'THAT'S AGAINST OUR RELIGION!"  That was a major moment for me when I came to realize that maybe 'our' religion wasn't 'my' religion. Needless to say, I became pretty ostracized in my homeroom class...and in the halls...and invited to MANY more religious functions after that.....

In college, it was a different story for me. I was pretty active in the secular community by this time. I was working as an orientation leader and ambassador for my university. I had been asked by the student affairs office to help them run a leadership camp on campus for a few days. The students attending the camp would be incoming freshmen who would want to take leadership roles early on. Awesome for them, right?  I get there and the camp is headed up by the disabilities administrator- a known religious woman. Not a big deal to me. Until she started leading the students in prayer before meals. Most of the other students didn't mind it and followed along eagerly. However, there was a few students who had gotten to know me well enough to come to me and tell me that they were atheist and didn't know how to react to this. I ended up talking to the admin- who blew me off. She had even stated before her prayers that 'people are not going to like this but I don't care.'  I filed a formal complaint with the local chapter of the ACLU. I don't know what came of it. I do know that this admin had been reported before.

The big deal here is that school is HUGE social place for students. It's where we go to meet lifelong friends, learn our social behavior and figure out what is acceptable for us. We live in a nation that was founded on the right and freedom to choose our own path. Our major institutions should reflect that. Atheists are not trying to rip your beliefs out of you. We are trying to make sure that you are not trampling on others' beliefs. Government is for all people not just the ones who look and think like you. Public places should be separate from religion because they are that- public. Religious people already have institutions for their beliefs- tax free I might add.

**In all fairness, in middle school, myself and another 'religious' student bullied our brand new, very young science teacher out of teaching evolution because it was 'against our religion'. We really just wanted to roam the halls instead of going to class. Instead of letting people who had a problem with it out of class she chose to skip the chapter all together. I'm so ashamed of that now. I eventually learned about evolution in college but, I made other kids miss out on learning about it.I'll always be sorry about that.