>If no religious songs are sung in school, what's happening to put your child between the rock and the hard place?

If you take out songs that have any religious connotations, and that have "adopted" religious connotations (like "Jingle Bells" -- it was originally a Thanksgiving song, but is now considered a Christmas song), what are we left with? An awful lot of songs sung in elementary school (which is about the only place that the arts are mandatory, at least once a week anyway) are based on the melody from hymns, including some patriotic songs. Oh yeah...forget studying art history, as almost all art prior to the 1800s (except prehistoric art) was sponsored by churches.

With my Girl Scout troop, I no longer celebrate holidays of ANY kind. I tried to have a December meeting where we learned about the December celebrations of each of the girls in the troop (represented were: Christmas--the Christian kind, Christmas--the pagan devotion to the shopping malls, Hanukah, Divali, and Kwanzaa). BTW, GSUSA considers this a "sensitive issue," and requires a special permission slip signed by parents or the girl cannot stay -- that way the parents know what they're in for. Nobody withdrew their child. The girls *loved* it, and were interested in learning about what their friends did. The parents went ballistic. These parents did NOT want their girls learning about diversity (a basic tenant of Girl Scouting, and I something we strive for in America). That wasn't the only holiday. I knew Halloween was not a good thing in the area, but I never dreamed of Valentine's Day being a problem. And don't do Memorial Day in the South, either. I know how to solve the problem...no more holidays, and if it's not actually for a GS badge, I probably won't touch it.

It's too bad. Singing those songs in school, learning about the different people's customs -- it's how I found out that my friends were "different" (but they weren't! They were just like me but did things differently!) and that opened doors to talk to them and find out about other religions and cultures.

Now my son goes to an elementary school where children or their parents come from 53 different countries. Diversity is embraced (or is it enforced?). My son wanted to know where we are from. I said "America." Well, others have cool labels like Asian American, Native American, African American, Latin American, Hispanic, Jewish, Hindi, Muslim, and so on, what's ours? "American." That's all? His words: "We're JUST an American?! Oh." Yep, my son, we're just good ol' Americans. It does seem like plain-old Americans are nothing special.

BTW, his favorite songs are the ones that come from religions/cultures different than his. What's he gonna sing if we take all the songs out of the curriculum that have any basis on religion?
- della