Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Whose Kids Are They?

This fight over homeschooling in California may be a harbinger of battles ahead.

From "Whose kids are they?" posted Jennifer Roback Moss, posted 4/1/08 at tothesource.org

This week in Madison, WI, a high school student filed a federal lawsuit alleging school officials tried to suppress his constitutional right of religious expression. Asked to draw a landscape, the student added a cross and the words, "John 3:16. A sign of peace." Though other students were allowed to draw "demonic" images, the art teacher insisted he remove the cross because it might offend other students. The student refused and was given a zero. The assistant principal told the boy his religious expression infringed on other students' rights. Yet in this same school, Buddha and Hindu figurines adorn a social studies classroom where the teacher teaches Hindu principles to students. Down the hall a picture of a Hindu goddess greets students near a drawing of a robed sorcerer.

No big deal right? Just one student in one school.

How about we add this to the mix? This week the Vatican announced that Catholicism is no longer the world's largest religious denomination, Islam is. As Catholic countries become more secular, like Spain or Italy, their birth rates fall. Cultures that turn child rearing over to the state, regardless of religious belief, see their birth rates decline - often below replacement. To counter this demographic suicide secular countries such as France, Italy, and Russia actually pay citizens to have children.

The State of California has another idea on insuring an endless supply of properly trained citizens...

Read the rest of this insightful commentary.