Should schools scrap religious holidays? - USATODAY.com

Should schools scrap religious holidays? - USATODAY.com: "What fairness requires

In most U.S. school districts, it is too soon to exclude all religious holy days from our public school calendars, chiefly because favoring Christianity and Judaism over other religions doesn't yet seem to most of us to be unfair. But it is unfair. Those of us who see this unfairness should work in my view not for fewer school holy days but for more. It is time to chip away at our spring vacations by pushing for the inclusion of the Buddha's birthday and the Chinese New Year on our public school calendars. Perhaps we should even "do the Wiccan thing."

As these celebrations expand, the demands of the Constitution and of pragmatism, which now run in opposite directions, will merge, forcing us to do what we are eventually going to have to do: Whittle our public school holy days down to zero.

Stephen Prothero is a religion professor at Boston University and the author of the book God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World — and Why Their Differences Matter."



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