The Supreme Court heard the case today about whether the words ‚Äòunder god’ should be part of the Pledge of Allegiance recited by public school students each day. According to an article on CNN.com, the court sounded skeptical about the pledge being an endorsement of religion or a prayer. A decision should be handed down in June.

Despite the court case and the details behind the lawsuit itself, I must weigh in with my opinion. I am an educator who happens to be agnostic. I am not an atheist. I do have strong feelings about any form of religion being in the educational setting. It is my opinion that the words ‚Äòunder god’ should NOT be part of the pledge. I realize that reciting the pledge is optional and doesn’t promote any one religion, but having the word god in the pledge alone suggests that religion plays a large part of our country when in fact our country was createdin part to provide religious freedom. We should not be reminded every day that so much of our country is run by religious zealots. Every day when I recite the pledge with my students, I skip those words. I’m more then happy to chant the other words in the pledge. I feel strongly about our country but I don’t feel that religion should be part of public education. I also have strong feelings about religion but my ideas and opinions about religion will be saved for a later post.

I get offended rather easily when subtle religious icons are promoted within public schools. For example, during the winter holidays (Christmas for those of you who celebrate Christmas) a fellow teacher of mine displayed a white star with twinkle lights on it outside her classroom. Without actually saying it, this was obviously a reference to the star the wise men supposedly followed to find jesus. Every time I walked by her room I was offended and thought about how mad I was that she was displaying this star. I asked her why she put it there and she said it was just a decoration, that it looked like a snowflake and it didn’t mean anything. Saying that, she could get away with it. I didn’t put up a big stink but I did tell her what I thought it meant. She wasn’t too pleased to hear that.

Each month we have a birthday breakfast to celebrate the birthdays during that month. Well, at our last one the theme was Mardi Gras. I was offended because Mardi Gras has it’s religious background. This is supposedly the last day before lent, the day you can go crazy before giving up something for your religion. Obviously this is a religious type holiday. I was offended when I saw all the decorations. Then I was outraged when one of the hosts announced to the faculty that whoever found the baby jesus in their piece of cake won a prize! I couldn’t believe it! How could she be that blunt. Besides the fact that I’m agnostic, there were several jewish people there. Surely they felt weird when she announced there was a baby jesus in our cake! After the breakfast I went to her separately and told her about being offended and she apologized profusely. Of course she just assumed that everyone was of the same religious persuasion. I just couldn’t believe it. This is 2004. You can not assume everyone believes the same way you do.

The religious right has already had their effect on our schools. I cringe every morning when we have our ‘moment of silence.’ What is that? If you need time to pray to whatever god you worship, do it at home, on your own time. Don’t bring that to school. We can use that time for more productive activities. I respect that moment of silence but I do not stand there with my head bowed or anything like that. I go about my business without making a sound. It pisses me off that I have to do that in the first place.

I believe in the separation of church and state. It’s simple. If you have anything to do with government or state business, keep your religion at home or your place of worship. There is no need to bring it to the work place.