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CAROLYN
BEITZEL
Diary #14
Treading
Carefully Through the Holidays
Being religiously
correct at this time of year is really hard. I try to be conscious of what
might give offense, but I often feel like I am stepping on someone's toes.
This is a new phenomena for me. Before I became a teacher, I never had to
consider whether my celebration of Christmas would reflect negatively on
me. Or that I might be required to defend my holiday motives.
I have been
following the hoopla in
Australia about Santa Claus in the classroom. I am not sure why it is
such a big deal. Like anything else in this world about which people may
disagree, we always have the choice to not participate in the activity we
find troubling.
To put this
into perspective, there have been three incidents of holiday fervor in our
school recently. Last week we placed in the students' Wednesday folder (used
to communicate with home) a flyer for a performance of Handel's Messiah
to be held at the high school's performing arts center. Our classes also
had an assembly where we listened to the dress rehearsal of our school's
winter concert. This seemed to be fairly innocuous. The children all participate.
No one on our team asked to be excused for religious reasons.
Then our school
presented the winter concert of orchestra, band and chorus selections to
the public. The chorus sang all secular songs, but did include a spiritual.
The orchestra and band played more of a medley of diverse holiday songs.
I only heard of one person complaining that the music was all about Christianity.
Even I was a little uncomfortable, knowing that the message was all one
sided, and I wondered how many complaints would roll in. The most vocal
complaint came from an employee in our school.
School colors
or Christian symbols?
This week all
homerooms are taking part in a "Winter Wonderland" decorating competition,
which is sponsored by the student council. The rules of competition require
homerooms to keep the decorations on a winter seasonal theme and to not
include religious themes. We are all happily drawing, cutting and stringing
garland in the halls. The kids in my homeroom have come up with their idea
and are running with the planning of how it will look. Several homerooms
are planning to use Christmas symbols as the theme. If they do, the judges
will be taking off points according to the rubric.
Our homeroom
theme is the song "Walking in a Winter Wonderland." We have illustrated
each verse and are hanging each picture. The kids have also strung paper
pine trees, snowflakes, snowmen and round plastic balls from the ceiling.
It is hard to determine what is a Christian symbol and what isn't. Some
are obvious but others fall in a gray area. For example, the colored balls
we were told, were Christmas tree ornaments. Well, I guess they might be
tree ornaments if they were hanging on a tree, but they're not. They are
round balls in blue, silver and gold (school colors) dangling from the ceiling.
I said they are not hanging to symbolize Christmas but were merely a decoration
in the school color scheme.
The kids really
thought about everything they put up and if we decided it might be seen
as religious, we vetoed the idea. Therefore, the sleigh (in the first verse)
is not pulled by Santa and reindeer but by a horse. All the snowmen scenes
have no other Christmas symbols, i.e. Christmas tree, wreaths on the doors,
etc.. We didn't even use lights to decorate with.
Some homerooms
are not participating, because the kids didn't want to do the work. In some
cases, students are being excluded from this exciting, community-building
event in our school because a teacher's personal religious beliefs got in
the way. And that's a shame.
The common
good
My students
have been learning about the Constitution and all the compromises that occurred
before that document was written. We have also been learning about the rights
and freedoms of U.S. citizens afforded by the Bill of Rights. If we are
to live and work with each other equally, then should we not each give up
a little for the common good of us all?
I teach in a
school where over 60% of the students have parents born in another country.
We are diverse and multicultural. In the enrichment class I teach, we have
been learning about different holidays celebrated in the month of December.
We first started with Kwanzaa, then Ramadan and now we are talking about
Hanukkah. I have not received any parent complaint that I am teaching "religion"
to their children.
What I am teaching
them is how we need to become culturally aware of our differences, how we
can learn from one another, and that, at the end of the day, we are pretty
much the same. We all think, feel and bleed like the person sitting next
to us. It should not matter that our religious beliefs are different or
that we celebrate different holidays.
When we start
to micromanage our teaching to not offend someone then I think we are not
teaching the right message. Our Constitution allows us the right to think
and speak our minds. One person's beliefs, or lack of beliefs, should not
impede another's. Any teacher who allows personal issues surrounding the
celebration of Christmas to limit students' participation is not keeping
an open mind to the feelings of others -- and may in fact be stifling a
learning opportunity about everyone's right to religious freedom.
Something as
simple as decorating a doorway can become a huge issue in these hyper-sensitive
times. It is hard to teach my students about the importance of keeping an
open mind about people's differences when we witness discrimination, intolerance
or intimidation in our own school. There seem to be no winners in this situation,
but the losers are us all.
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