This is interesting. School boards around the country are trying to figure out how to accomodate religious holidays.
Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, and Christian — each faith has its holy days. Schools across the country are asking how to respect them all.
Consider the University at Albany, which canceled classes on major Muslim holidays. Faculty wanted the move out of concern for Muslim students after the Sept. 11 attacks. But then came the questions: What about Hindus? Buddhists?
President Kermit Hall last fall decided to return to the original calendar.
“Can you operate a university and give each religious group an accommodation? I think the answer is, ‘No,’” he said.
Make that “maybe.” School administrators across the country are rethinking their calendars as their student bodies become more diverse. [...]
Some schools close for the beginning of hunting season. San Francisco schools have Cesar Chavez Day on March 30 to celebrate farmworkers, and Chicago schools have March 5 to honor Casimir Pulaski, a Polish count who helped the American side in the Revolutionary War.
Religion is more sensitive. Some districts mark “special observance days” when no test or exam can be scheduled. Other districts find inspiration in the business world — each student gets a number of “floating” days to celebrate his or her own holidays with an excused absence.
“‘Choose your own holiday’ has become more popular,” said Kathryn Lohre, assistant director of Harvard University’s Pluralism Project, which studies diversity in religion. “It takes pressure off the school boards.”
New Jersey’s board of education now lists 76 excused religious holidays, from Russian Orthodox to Sikh. New York City schools are even more flexible. Students with a letter from parents get an excused absence for a holiday in any religion.
Hmm, interesting. That list of NJ excused holydays can be found here. In this state, heck, in this town, there’s such diversity, an incredibly fast-growing immigrant population, primarily from India and other Asian nations. Our school calendar recognizes traditional Christian and Jewish holy days. I have to wonder if the time will come that school will be scheduled on those dates, and families will be asked to use their “floating holydays” for Good Friday or Yom Kippur?
I’m not sure how I feel about all this. Looking at the Roman Catholic holydays listed (because those are the ones that would affect my kids) would I take my kids out of school for All Saints Day? How about the next day, All Souls Day? Both would be excused. According to this list, my kids are entitled to 9 excused absences (assuming, of course, all the Catholic holydays fell on a school day.) Would I allow that to happen? Of couse not. But if a family is religious- well, they might. How does the administration of that work, what are the teachers’ responsibilities? How are standardized tests, finals, projects, scheduled? I
Nothing’s ever as simple as we’d like it to be, is it?
Bluegrass Mama can’t comment here due to technical difficulties but she emailed me this (with permission to post)
“I admit it. This makes me glad to live somewhere just a teensy less diverse than NJ. We have replaced “Breakfast with Santa” with something along the lines of “Winter Breakfast.” But holidays have not (yet) become an issue. Then again, we do go to school on Good Friday. But not on Derby Eve.”
And my response to BGM- surprisingly we aren’t all that politically correct here, yet. There are still Christmas (and Chanukka) songs in our holiday concerts. They still light a “Christmas Tree” at town hall (not a “holiday light display”.) Could be because it is such a small town still- people move here to be a part of what already exists, maybe.
As a teacher from NJ I have to say things officially got out of hand when the 100th day of school became a well known, in school holiday.
That and real life people were named Kermit.:)