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Daniel I. Goldberg
Citizen
Username: Dig
Post Number: 14
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 10:43 am: | 
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There are legitimate arguments that can be made on both sides of this issue. But, I think what we should be most upset with is the way that the BOE, and the Administrators went about implementing the present policy. Now, both the BOE and the Administrators have to defend their positions in litigation. They have given fuel to the religious right, and have legitimized the religious right's fight on this issue.
The issue of whether and in what context students should be performing religious songs is a worthwhile debate to have. But, because the BOE and the Administrators made a decision, without any prior public discussion of the issue, there is a tremendous amount of backlash. With emotions raised now, it is impossible to have a constructive discussion of these issues. Had the BOE and the Administrators engaged the parents in a discussion on the issue, and then demonstrated to the Towns that there was actual (and measurable) support for their position we would not be where we are today.
Moreover, it does the Towns a disservice to now have this discussion under the microscope of the rest of the Nation -- which is following this fight as a barometer of things to come in other districts throughout the country. The BOE and the Administrator's failure to engage the parents in a discussion on this issue, before implementing its policy has resulted in a lost opportunity to have a meaningful discussion on the topic.
Of course, let's not forget about the litigation. This is addressed to the BOE and the Administrators: I am assuming that the Board and the Administrators have an insurance policy that will cover its litigation costs in a legal fight of this nature. Please advise if this is correct. Also, please let me know what, if any, deductible there is. I think I speak for the rest of the taxpayers in the Towns, when I say that none of us want one penny of our tax dollars to pay for the defense of your rashly implemented policy.
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cmontyburns
Citizen
Username: Cmontyburns
Post Number: 590
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 10:47 am: |
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The school board has every right to set policies for the schools. Parents and community members have every right to disagree, and challenge those policies. Lawsuits should be reserved for extreme cases, when all other avenues have failed. That clearly wasn't the case here.
As a taxpayer, I'm certainly more pissed at the people bringing the suit than with the school board, which admittedly went about all of this in a clumsy way. |
SoOrLady
Citizen
Username: Soorlady
Post Number: 1617
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 11:28 am: |
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I agree with Monty. |
User58
Citizen
Username: User58
Post Number: 31
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 11:50 am: |
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the people have lost their minds. Are we allowd to say happy new year this week or do we insult the Chinese who have New year in feb? |
Brett Weir
Citizen
Username: Brett_weir
Post Number: 496
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 11:57 am: |
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The two are hand-in-glove; an extreme reaction to an extreme action. When a policy is set forth in such abrupt and unilateral fashion it is likely to cause overreaction to confront it.
Daniel Goldberg makes sense. Instead of this issue being introduced and debated earlier, it sprang forth with a resounding THUD that has now put it into the National consciousness. Instead of resolving it locally (either way) it has now become a cause celebre for extremists on both sides of the issue, none of whom care a bit about our communities or our children.
This matter was poorly handled from the beginning; those who brought it about are to blame for the ugliness that has resulted. |
susan1014
Supporter
Username: Susan1014
Post Number: 287
Registered: 3-2002
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 12:37 pm: |
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Much of the blame also accrues to those who have reacted to the BOE. The BOE is not to blame for locals who run to extremist lawyers simply because they exist and are looking for a cause. |
mtierney
Citizen
Username: Mtierney
Post Number: 710
Registered: 3-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 12:51 pm: |
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Joan Crystal: "Religion (especially Christian fundamentalist religion) played a major part in how people voted in the last election. When a Republican President was elected, in part because he claimed to have a very strong agreement with the religious teachings of these Christian groups, some people saw it as a mandate to increase the amount of Christian influence in our schools. The Maplewwod/South Orange debate is about a school district which chose to go in the other direction. That is what makes us so special and that is one reason why we have attracted so much publicity as a result."
Joan, it's a first! I almost always find your posts to be well-thought out and even where we disagree, I like what you write! But the above, no way!
Are you implying that some 10 days after the election our BOE sat down and decided to express their fear of raging Christianity by re stating the music policy? Without any community input? They were not elected to instruct us in national political policy as far as I know.
For one thing, all Christians are not Republicans - quite a few are Democrats! The blame for this debacle can be placed at the feet of the DNC and its far left platform which obviously turned off Democratic voters across the nation (excluding those in the blue states )
The Dem candidate ran a lack luster campaign and there really is no excuse for that.
Obviously the DNC has seen the light - the comments published recently show that it is very aware that it will have to move to the center and downplay some hot button issues if it wants to succeed in the future.
}one reason why we have attracted so much publicity as a result." I would not call what we have received "publicity" - ridicule is a more apt description.
Thanks, Joan, for helping me figure out how to change type, color, etc. on the tech thread. |
Brett Weir
Citizen
Username: Brett_weir
Post Number: 499
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 12:58 pm: |
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Extremism begets extremism. |
Soda
Citizen
Username: Soda
Post Number: 2223
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 9:44 pm: |
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Seems time to bring up Bill Moyers again:
On Receiving Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award
by Bill Moyers
(On Wednesday, December 1, 2004, the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Here is the text of his response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award)
"I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.
The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His bestseller The End of Nature carried on where Rachel Carson's Silent Spring left off.
Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.
That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.
As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.
I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144-just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.
So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer - 'the road to environmental apocalypse. Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that i will send a famine in the land.' He seemed to be relishing the thought.
And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"
Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's Providential History. You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie…that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' however, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth……while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.
I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."
I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect the dots:
I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.
That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.
That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.
That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.
That wants to open the arctic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.
I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
I read all this in the news.
I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international policy network, which is supported by ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is 'a myth, sea levels are not rising, scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.
I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.
I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer - pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.' And then I am stopped short by the thought: 'That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.'
And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?
What has happened to our moral imagination?
On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: 'How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"
I see it feelingly.
The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist, I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called 'hocma' - the science of the heart…..the capacity to see….to feel….and then to act…as if the future depended on you.
Believe me, it does."
I know it was quite a bit (alot?) to read, but then, the real world isn't easy, is it?
-s. |
talk-it-up
Citizen
Username: Talkitup
Post Number: 97
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 11:29 pm: |
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"This issue is about placing a form of censorship on music and upholding the decision to restrict the music traditionally available to students. It is not a decision about expanding to include other music and adding on to the traditional music, but about removing it in order to correct the situation. I for one would appreciate the sharing of many forms of music from diverse cultural backgrounds. I for one am tired of hearing one religion pitting itself against another. That is not what this is about. It is about placing restrictions on art. All of the reasons have been stated previously by other parties. I am afraid we are going backwards because I do not see how this thought process could restrict itself only to music. Where would it would end? We claim tolerance and then ban music."
My comments were not meant to promote the teaching of Christianity. They were meant to indicate that we should be aware of many traditions and customs. We claim to be diverse and yet we cannot listen to different types of music. Why can't we learn, read, perform music and plays, even taste foods from all sorts of cultural backgrouds and traditions? This is not about xmas carols. It is about all censorship. I want my child to be exposed to the classics and much of it is religiously based, as was art, architecture, writings, and so on. The arguements that are used to support the BOE just don't work. Those same arguements do not acknowledge that in a diverse community we should be learning about ALL people. In this "diverse community?" there is limited representation or sharing of ALL cultural backgrounds and traditions. Asian, Indian, etc. have what appears to be no such allocated time towards recognition. How can the same BOE support a whole month allocated to black history month and not have that balanced with similar time dedicated to other cultures and tradtions. Now, we also strip any recognition of religious or seasonal traditions. We have become rather like a tree in winter without any leaves - we are bare bones because it is safe and politically correct.
There must be a way to balance all of this... |
Bobkat
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 7110
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - 7:43 am: |
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Soda, what is the rapture index today?
I hope you don't equate these crazy people with what is going on here in our communities.
ps: How are the boils and sores? |
Josh M.
Citizen
Username: Jmaxlaw
Post Number: 198
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - 11:03 am: |
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Mr. Goldberg is right on point. mjc-- I was at Columbia when this policy was apparantly implemented-- and I don't remember anything about it. I challenge someone to find or produce a News-Record or Star-Ledger article on the implementation of the policy (the first time). |
pan
Citizen
Username: Pan
Post Number: 86
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2004 - 12:25 pm: |
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Soda, thank you for the above post of Bill Moyers’ address. In my opinion he is one of the most respected, farsighted, honest, journalists. Yes, it is long reading but I hope many of MOLers and SOOLers, take the time and read the entire speech. I hope that the South Orange civic leaders read it also; they seem to believe that South Orange does not have any share in the responsibility to protect our environment, that the problem is somebody else’s. They show a total disrespect for nature and the environment.
Bobkat: “I hope you don't equate these crazy people with what is going on here in our communities.”
I don’t know if Soda does, but I do equate what is going on in our community with “these crazy people”. They were not always “crazy”. There was a time when they were like us. Then they started ostracizing music and burning crosses, and puff! they were “crazy”. If we continue our ways of banishing certain music in our schools instead of embracing all music, soon we also will be burning crosses, and paint red brushstrokes on the front doors of those who don't agree with our beliefs. |
argon_smythe
Citizen
Username: Argon_smythe
Post Number: 478
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 11:52 am: |
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I for one do not want my religion nor any other taught in the schools. There are plenty of religious institutions out there to take care of this. Face it, folks. No public school is going to "teach" Christmas the right way. These "crazies" are looking for the "Christ in Christmas" in the schools, in the shopping malls, when they should be looking in the church.
I don't send my kid to the barber for a medical check-up and I don't send my kid to school to learn about religion. If I wanted that, I would send him to a school run by a church.
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silkcity
Citizen
Username: Silkcity
Post Number: 282
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 12:04 pm: |
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It's happening anyway, argon. Learning about "community" and celebrations is part of the curriculum. It starts in K and continues thru the years of Social Studies -- yes, it really does.
Getting that out of the schools is a whole different fight... |
Katie Clayton
Citizen
Username: Grovykndofluv
Post Number: 102
Registered: 2-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, January 1, 2005 - 9:23 pm: |
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Mayor McCheese
Citizen
Username: Mayor_mccheese
Post Number: 65
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 10:51 am: |
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Argon,
Are you saying that you would rather have your children remain ignorant about religion? So what if schools teach about religion, don't kids go there to learn? I would rather my children get a well rounded education (including being taught about religion). Or perhaps we should just pretend that religions do not exist. Religion, whether it offends people or not is a large part of the world today. Learning about religions should is enlightening, not offensive.
Should we also take sex education out of the schools and let only doctors teach it?
I guess I will send the children to a school run by religion when I get my property tax check back from the town. I mean sense the kids can't get a proper well rounded education at public school; I shouldn't have to pay for something I don't use, right?
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argon_smythe
Citizen
Username: Argon_smythe
Post Number: 479
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 11:55 am: |
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I'm a liberal arts major and believe in a well-rounded education. I also know that school is not the only place where things are taught and learned, and that schools themselves have limited time and resources to get the job done. I'm no "back to basics," "three-Rs" type but at the same time, I do believe that a well-run school district needs to have a well defined core curriculum that is not its top priority but in fact its only priority. Just because something is worth learning, does not mean it needs to be taught in the public schools, or indeed that they are the best place to teach it.
The ironic thing about all this is that as the supposed adults in this community consulted their lawyers and their PACs, posted venom and misinformation on this and other forums, and generally sought out every opportunity to complicate and exacerbate the controversy and disagreement, moving farther rather than closer to amicable agreement, it was the kids who did the right thing. They formed a musical group outside of the school, which is their right in our free society. They practiced on their own time, making it their personal priority to do so, as is their right again to pursue their own happiness and that of others. And they put on a concert for the community, enjoying their right of public assembly and free speech. Smart kids, these. And not smart in return for an A in a class -- this is the kind of smart that involves character and class. Would that the adults in the community displayed half that shown by these kids.
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Lizziecat
Citizen
Username: Lizziecat
Post Number: 468
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 2:12 pm: |
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If you want your children to learn about religion, send them to a religious school or to a religious instruction program supported by the religion of your choice. A secular, tax supported public school is not the place for children to learn about religion. |
cmontyburns
Citizen
Username: Cmontyburns
Post Number: 601
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 8:47 pm: |
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Mayor McCheese: Many schools don't allow sex education, for purely religious reasons. If the two are so at odds with each other, I'd rather have my kid learning sex ed than religion in school. |
StringsTeacher99
Supporter
Username: Blue_eyes
Post Number: 263
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 8:51 pm: |
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Wouldn't excluding sex ed because of religious reasons be including religious beliefs in the public school system through exclusion? Oh boy... my head is spinning... this is all too ridiculous for me. |
Rudy Huxtable
Citizen
Username: Rudy_huxtable
Post Number: 17
Registered: 10-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, January 2, 2005 - 11:52 pm: |
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Katie Clayton
Citizen
Username: Grovykndofluv
Post Number: 108
Registered: 2-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, January 8, 2005 - 12:25 am: |
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this is so funny i had to bring it back to the top!
KAZAAM! |
claudmusselman
Citizen
Username: Claudmusselman
Post Number: 26
Registered: 11-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, January 9, 2005 - 11:02 pm: |
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This officer is here to see that there is no cheating.....cheating. |
Angus MacGuyver
Citizen
Username: Macgyver
Post Number: 8
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 10:07 pm: |
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Now diving, Thorton Mellon.....Mellon. |
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