Mississippi hs students forced to attend religious assembly

[Lillybee]

I think that this is a violation of the constitution.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/25/m ... n-lecture/

[RosyDaisy]

This is all over my conservative/fundie family members' FB pages. Ugh!

[Drina Adams]

I presume they're outraged at the constitutional breaches in the case?

[formergothardite]

What were they thinking? They had to know that in this day and time you will get sued for pulling this shit.

[alba]

See, before Jesus came, innocent blood had to be shed for our sins [...] There had to be an animal that was sacrificed toatone [sic] for our sin. There had to be innocent blood.

Only when you worship a vengeful God who requires the sacrifice of innocents (and wasn't Jesus himself an innocent?) as penance for human failings.

[thoughtful]

teachers blocked the exits to prevent students from leaving

Nothing like a bit of forced imprisonment to demonstrate the love of Jesus. :roll:

[Fargood]

When I was a senior in high school, Bush Sr. was upping his chances of re-election by doing a propaganda speech which had mandatory attendence for all high school seniors.

My Dad said, "ah, hell no." He called the school and pitched a fit. The school relented and allowed those seniors whose parents objected to sit out of the speech, which was shown by video. The annoying part was that prior to showing the video, they named all those students whose parents had called in. We were identified by name over loudspeaker and they told us to report to a classroom with nothing in it. We just sat there, no books, no backpacks, no homework was allowed. We just had to sit there and stare at the walls, similar to detention. Even then, I thought it was pretty hella fucked up.

My point being, even 20 years ago, I think things like this occurred, it just didn't necessarily get discused on a widespread basis.

[fauxmenno]

Well shit. I don't know what I would have done if I had been subjected to this in HS. I probably would have protested and been expelled or something. This is just WRONG at a public school.

[Jana814]

That's just wrong!! How did they get away w/ that? I'm in New Jersery, where I am their is a large population of Jewish people that would never happen & if it did the school would be sued so fast they wouldn't know what hit them!

[Fargood]

If my kids were subjected to something like this, I would go off my rocker.

[AnywhereButHere]

That's just wrong!! How did they get away w/ that? I'm in New Jersery, where I am their is a large population of Jewish people that would never happen & if it did the school would be sued so fast they wouldn't know what hit them!

I'm in NY, so same here. I'd almost pay to see them try it though! You'd think it would be a given that it is unconstitutional, but it is Mississippi where I think they have their own special interpretation of this country's laws...

I'm sure there are many wonderful, intelligent and rational people in Mississippi, but unfortunately, the ones that make the news are, well, a touch extreme in their views...

**Edited, because if I am going to use the word intelligent in a sentence, it's probably important to spell it correctly.**

[ThatSnark]

I used to live in Jackson, Mississippi, which is the "big city" there. You don't have to drive 15 minutes outside of it to find an almost completely homogenized population anywhere you go-- so it doesn't surprise me at all that enough people with power got together and made this happen without a peep from the public. I lived there in 1995-6 and there were bumper stickers all over about bringing prayer back to schools. Looks like they've succeeded.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

I'm going to have to go to Mississippi one day to see this strange land that produces all these bizarre news stories. My CA mind is so intrigued.

[ThatSnark]

I'm going to have to go to Mississippi one day to see this strange land that produces all these bizarre news stories. My CA mind is so intrigued.

See, if you went and met these people, they would be extremely nice. Solid citizens, considerate, well-mannered for the most part. It's just when they start circling the wagons around an issue that things get weird and irrational.

[docmom]

Can you imagine the national outcry, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the calls for instant execution, if this had been a forced Muslim assembly?

[Childless]

I have a friend whose husband, for some reason unbeknownst to anyone, wanted to move to Mississippi. She said, hell no. She wasn't raising her kids in Mississippi and it would be a cold day in hell before they went to school down there. So, her husband left and she stayed here. It appears she made the right decision.

[Jinger Jar]

I'm going to have to go to Mississippi one day to see this strange land that produces all these bizarre news stories. My CA mind is so intrigued.

You don't need to leave the Golden State to see this stuff. The school district a couple of towns over from mine in the San Joaquin Valley is controlled by a very conservative Christian faction. They dominate the school board - I think they are the school board, in fact - and have appointed a superintendent and hired school site administration who are of the same denomination. Applicants are asked outright in interviews which church they attend, unmarried employees who cohabitate or get pregnant find themselves receiving poor performance evaluations. Schools have Jesus Saves! rallies, and teachers preach and pray openly in their classrooms. The district doesn't attract attention because first, it's small (two elementary schools and one combo middle/high school), and the vast majority of employees and parents attend the same church.

I learned about the goings on there at a conference, where I met one of the few non-fundie teachers employed there. He got into it with his administration because he refused espouse Creationism in his biology class, and some parents wanted to pull their kids out of his classes and put them with the other science teacher, who basically taught that Jesus rode around Galilee on a triceratops. :roll: He routinely received poor performance evaluations, but the district knew better than to fire him outright because if he sued them they'd end up paying him bazillions in a settlement.

My question is how they're able to carry on like this, continue to receive state and federal monies, and not be held accountable by the CA Dept. of Ed.

[Lillybee]

In my conservative area, parents had to sign a permission slip to allow their high school children to see Obama's speech to school children because, oh no, the kids may be tainted by his liberalism.

[SamuraiKatz]

I, unfortunately, live in the Bible belt. This is more common than you think especially in the smaller towns..The principal should be fired.

When my kids were in school, the instruction was: "If anyone in your school tries to force you to attend a religious event. You are to pitch an unholy fit and have them call your mother. I will come to the school and sort it out." I had two sit down meetings with school admin with two different kids..the fundies never quit...and will pull anything they think they can get away with.

[PennySycamore]

You don't need to leave the Golden State to see this stuff. The school district a couple of towns over from mine in the San Joaquin Valley is controlled by a very conservative Christian faction. They dominate the school board - I think they are the school board, in fact - and have appointed a superintendent and hired school site administration who are of the same denomination. Applicants are asked outright in interviews which church they attend, unmarried employees who cohabitate or get pregnant find themselves receiving poor performance evaluations. Schools have Jesus Saves! rallies, and teachers preach and pray openly in their classrooms. The district doesn't attract attention because first, it's small (two elementary schools and one combo middle/high school), and the vast majority of employees and parents attend the same church.

I learned about the goings on there at a conference, where I met one of the few non-fundie teachers employed there. He got into it with his administration because he refused espouse Creationism in his biology class, and some parents wanted to pull their kids out of his classes and put them with the other science teacher, who basically taught that Jesus rode around Galilee on a triceratops. :roll: He routinely received poor performance evaluations, but the district knew better than to fire him outright because if he sued them they'd end up paying him bazillions in a settlement.

My question is how they're able to carry on like this, continue to receive state and federal monies, and not be held accountable by the CA Dept. of Ed.

Someone needs to sic Americans United and/or the ACLU on the District's ass. What they are doing is illegal.

[alba]

I'm going to have to go to Mississippi one day to see this strange land that produces all these bizarre news stories. My CA mind is so intrigued.

Me too. Or anywhere in the Bible Belt. Or Midwest. I live in the UK, and the stories I hear of Public Displays of Christianity coming from those parts of the country just boggle my mind. Even growing up in Canada it was never like that.

Can you imagine the national outcry, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the calls for instant execution, if this had been a forced Muslim assembly?

I know, eh? Freedom of religion only applies when it's Christianity (preferably evangelical) :roll:

[Childless]

This just further proves that my desire to send my child to a private secular school is the correct one.

[feministing]

At my fundie elementary school, we didn't even HAVE biology. Or even science for that matter. Once every 2 weeks, we had "science" class from our French teacher. We built Legos and coloured in pictures of animals. I wish I was kidding. I didn't learn a damn thing in that class.

At my public secondary school I had science class for the first time. I seriously felt the world open up. The one thing this deprivation did was made me realize how damn necessary science is, and how even at the secondary level the world made so much more sense because of it. (I was a troubled ball if fire in elementary school, blasphemous even then, so my shitty behavioural evaluations got me rejected from all the fundie secondary schools so my parents had no choice! Bad influence ftw!)

ETA: funny enough, my elementary school had mandated sex Ed... In which the teacher just spoke about puberty and warned us about the dangers of drugs.