God In School

2 Pages 490 Words

The most obvious evidence of school attempts to accommodate people’s religious beliefs and the one thing which is sure to affect everyone involved, regardless of their religious beliefs, is the decision to simply close a school during a religious holiday. Traditionally, this has only occurred around Christmas, but that is starting to change.

The question of closing school is a difficult dilemma for school administrators: if they keep schools open, they risk being portrayed as insensitive to the minority religious faiths in their community; but if they close the schools, they risk being portrayed as trying to show favoritism. This, of course, is a consequence of the tradition of always closing for Christmas — if schools never closed for any religious holiday, there could be no charges of favoritism and little basis for the allegation of any particular insensitivity.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that schools can simply refuse to close on holidays like Christmas.

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The fact of the matter is, when there are enough followers of a particular religion in a community, you can be sure that on major holidays there will be a high degree of absenteeism in the schools.
It might be reasonably argued that schools would be showing hostility towards religion if they didn’t try help students make up for missed work, but it can be easier for schools to simply close and keep everyone at the same stage of instruction. This has been the reason given by school districts when their closing policies have been challenged and the courts have thus far accepted it as a fair and reasonable argument. School closin...