On Proselytizing Teachers

Check out this blogger's recent post. I don't want to re-write or summarize her post so I'll just direct you all to it and ask you to read it before the rest of this post.

Go on. I'll wait.

Done? Alright then. Here I go.

WHY is it so hard for people to separate their religious faith from the rest of their life? Why can't people realize that if they work in the public domain that it is just plain common sense to keep their religion to themselves? Wear a cross if you must, put a nativity on your lawn in the winter, but don't "God bless !" me when I pay for my gas. Wal*Mart took a lot of heat for saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas; apparently inclusion is anti-Christian now. But Wal*Mart should say Happy Holidays because very few of their Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, etc customers are going to have a Christmas anyway. I don't run around wishing people a Happy Barmitzvah unless I know they are both Jewish and also turning thirteen soon, because it makes no sense. I don't wish random people a Happy Solstice or Merry Samhain either, although I do say it to those I know it applies to. And since the ninety year old man in the scooter handing me a shopping cart with one stuck wheel doesn't know my religion it is presumptuous of him to assume that I'm Christian. The assumption seems to be that everyone either is or should be Christian and therefore the Merry Christmas greeting can be either a heartfelt pleasantry or a subtle way of saying that the other religions (or none at all) don't warrant any notice. And don't even get me started on the trend of the funny-yet-poignant signs on church lawns. I guess it's free expression but if I put a lit up letter-board on my lawn proclaiming that if you are "Finding Life A Little Dark? The Goddess Illuminates." I would definitely hear about it. But replace The Goddess with Jesus and you've got the sign in front of my local church this week. Last week it was "Jesus, Rarely Early But Never Late."

As for government employees, well they take on an extra responsibility, to not only keep
their beliefs silent but also any feelings they may have regarding other religions. And in schools, teachers have a greater responsibility because of the impressionable nature of their students and the captivity of their audience, and the authority they wield enabling them to censor students. So what it boils down to, in my opinion is this. The teacher can decide who to call on and how long to let them speak, an ability that can in effect censor any student who dares speak up against the teacher. Students are forced by law, unless their families can afford private schools or the time home needed to home-school, to attend public school and take classes taught by whomever the district chose to hire. Young children are placed daily in the care of teachers whom parents have to blindly trust. And we tell our children to believe, and in some cases to memorize, what the teacher tells them as fact. After all, a young kid doesn't know the difference between "2+2=4" and "Jesus is the only true god".

I attended public school for more than twelve years (nobody but me seems to count kindergarten) and looking back, there have been a few things I thought sounded preachy but didn't have the nerve to speak up about. For instance, my home-ec teacher went on an anti-abortion rant one day. I happen to be anti-abortion (for the most part, I do believe in moral gray areas), but I thought spouting of terms like "infanticide" and "babies torn to shreds in the womb" to be a bit much for a classroom full of fourteen year old girls.

I can also remember the sex-ed chapter of my freshman health class, taught by the boys wrestling coach. We were taught that STDs were (I am not kidding here) punishment from God for promiscuity and that if you only had sex with someone you loved you were somehow immune from the burning lesions of God's wrath. I agree, if all people saved themselves for marriage and went their entire lives with only one partner, the STD rate would go down. But here's the problem: catching diseases doesn't just hinge on your morality. You may love and trust your mate , but what if, when he was a young man full of urges and desperation, some hot little slut had gotten a hold of him? No matter who he is now, at some point he was a teenage boys with a box of tissues on his nightstand and boobs were hypnotic to him. So although you may love him dearly and trust him with all your heart, he may not have always been the same moral upstanding guy. He may not have been someone you'd trust at all. And what about cold sores? Little kids get cold sores; they aren't all sexually transmitted. But if you rub your lips and then touch your, uh, bits and pieces, you can give yourself herpes. Any cold sore below the belt is going to be recurrent and transmittable through sex. What did that little kid so to piss off God?

Now, to be fair, this particular teacher overstepped on more than just religion. I wish I had a daughter in his class now so that I could say things on her behalf I never had the guts to say on my own at that young age. He was, in addition to being the boys wrestling coach and the freshman health teacher, the sophomore girls PE teacher and one chapter in gym class was swimming. Now, for obvious medical reasons, there might be a week or so when girls don't feel like swimming. But he was having none of that; he just told us to wear tampons or flunk the class. I can remember fifteen year old girls who were completely freaked out because they found tampons to be a bit, shall we say, invasive for their tastes. But the grade for the quarter depended on it, so what choice did they have? Back then I just thought it was a little off, but now I wonder where the hell that guy thought he had any right at all to tell fifteen year old girls that their grades depended on putting anything in their vaginas. I wish I knew a girl in his class now. I would march down to that school and cause such a loud screaming scene that the police would have to remove me, and then I'd demand his immediate termination.

Can you tell that this guy still pisses me off?

Oh well, there's my two cents on teachers basically being dicks imposing their wills on students who have no choice but to hear it. And as always, I welcome comments.