Parent's Challenge School's Bible Class Time
Since 1929, public schools in Staunton, Virginia, have made sure the students in grades 1-3 get to know their Bible. Until 1948 the 30-minute study segments were part of the school curriculum. After the Supreme Court declared it illegal the schools and the children's parents agreed to what is, in most places, called a "release time" program. In "release time" students are offered a short "elective" during the school day. The "Bible Class" is one elective and, since the school cannot teach it, the students are released to local churches for their study each day. Students who do not opt into the "elective" remain at school and do homework or some other supervised activity.
No one really questions whether or not this is legal or not. Similar programs in other places have been upheld by courts as long as other faith groups or other community programs have similar access to interested students during school hours. In most places, including Utah, which once had the nation's largest "release time" program, the administrative headaches in meeting legal compliance have forced the termination of such programs.
In Staunton, and a few other small, rural Bible Belt" communities, the tradition has continued because of strong community and parental support.
Now, Staunton is being forced to face up to the issue by some parents who have recently moved into the community from places where the concept of "release time" seems like something created by fundamentalist, lunatic fringe fanatics still living in the Middle Ages. This is far from the truth, of course, but this quaint tradition, based on strong, historic community values based on the Word of God, has now been challenged. More than a few local parents, emboldened, perhaps, by the newcomers, have also expressed their desire to do away with the program.
Way back in 1846 James Lowell wrote a poem protesting America's war with Mexico. This poem is now a well known and popular Christian hymn, "Once to Every Man and Nation." In the third verse are these words, perhaps applicable to the present dilemma facing the parents and school board in Staunton:
No one really questions whether or not this is legal or not. Similar programs in other places have been upheld by courts as long as other faith groups or other community programs have similar access to interested students during school hours. In most places, including Utah, which once had the nation's largest "release time" program, the administrative headaches in meeting legal compliance have forced the termination of such programs.
In Staunton, and a few other small, rural Bible Belt" communities, the tradition has continued because of strong community and parental support.
Now, Staunton is being forced to face up to the issue by some parents who have recently moved into the community from places where the concept of "release time" seems like something created by fundamentalist, lunatic fringe fanatics still living in the Middle Ages. This is far from the truth, of course, but this quaint tradition, based on strong, historic community values based on the Word of God, has now been challenged. More than a few local parents, emboldened, perhaps, by the newcomers, have also expressed their desire to do away with the program.
Way back in 1846 James Lowell wrote a poem protesting America's war with Mexico. This poem is now a well known and popular Christian hymn, "Once to Every Man and Nation." In the third verse are these words, perhaps applicable to the present dilemma facing the parents and school board in Staunton:
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
Or, in the more contemporaneous words of Bob Dylan,
The line it is drawn The curse it is cast
The slow one now Will later be fast
As the present now Will later be past
The order is Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
posted by Bird of Paradise at 7:47 PM
<< Home