Voice of Reason

Did you know that last week thousands of Orange County’s nine, ten and eleven year-old children were allowed to walk off the campuses of their public schools during school hours with a person that their parents have never met? They went into a trailer with a person that their teacher has seen before, but doesn’t really know. All the teachers know is that the children came back after an hour with candy and cupcakes.

“Oh my, that sounds really creepy!” you say, “Why didn’t I hear about this in the news?" What if I told you this happens every week? What if I told you that by the end of the year each of these students has missed over 30 hours of classroom instruction? That works out to missing about a week’s worth of school, education that taxpayers are being forced to pay for!

I’m talking about Religious Release Time. It is a program that allows youth pastors from non-denominational church groups to preach the gospel to children during school hours. Yes, I’m talking about public schools. A lot of people don’t even know that it exists. Even the parents who sign their children up for it usually don’t realize that their children are missing valuable instructional time in the classroom. I, as a tenured teacher, don’t even know of one parent that has ever actually met these youth ministers.

“Why aren’t these programs run during lunch, or after school?” you may ask. In some cases teachers have tried to get them scheduled during non-instructional times, but the Religious Release organizers refuse to be flexible.

“Well, the teachers can at least let the parents know that their child will be taken out of class during instructional time. Then the parents would most likely not sign up and the problem goes away.” Sorry, the teachers have been told that they must send the permission slips home, and can not discuss with parents or children the ramifications of missing this significant amount of school. This means that Religious Release is not only distracting from a child’s education, but directly overruling the teacher/parent relationship!

Imagine this:
You are ten years old. You have been sitting in a classroom working on a math or reading review activity because your teacher was not allowed to teach anything new over the last hour. In walk ten of your classmates. They are laughing, stuffing cupcakes in their mouths, and carrying pictures of Noah’s Ark that they have been coloring. Your friend sits down next to you, and says, “We got cupcakes. If we memorize a verse for next week, we get candy.”
I ask, what ten year-old wouldn’t rather join Religious Release than be in class?

Now imagine you are the teacher:
You have been told by administrators that you can not teach any new concepts while a third of your students are gone at Religious Release. The Religious Release students should not be made to make up any work, or be held accountable for anything that they missed while they were gone. You are, however being held accountable for what the students know and do not know. In fact, keeping your job may depend on it. Just as you are finishing with your time-killing lesson, in walk ten of your students. They have not been escorted quietly to the room, in fact they have been making noise disrupting classes all the way down the hall. They walk into class with cupcakes and coloring sheets. This disrupts the entire class. You know that this program hurts all of the students in your class academically, but you have been told that there is nothing you can do to change your situation.
I ask, what teacher wouldn’t be frustrated?

There are so many things wrong with the Religious Release Program; it is hard to know where to start.
1. First, it is unfair to the children. Those that join are being bribed out of their education. The one’s who don’t join are punished academically. I don’t think Jesus himself would have promoted this kind of manipulation.

2. It is also unfair to the parents. They don’t know whom their children are with, or what they are doing. Yes, they did sign the permission slip that is written in small print, but they can’t even get advice from their teacher as to whether this program will help or hinder their child’s progress in school.

3. It is also unfair to the taxpayers. You are paying for this child to have a non-religious public education. You are paying for these children to be in class when they are not there! You are also paying for those who do stay in class to be taught non-essential information while the others are missing.

4. It is also terribly unfair to the teachers. They are held accountable for what these children know and do not know. How can they do their best, when an entire week’s worth of time is taken away from their instruction each year?

A few years ago there was a big ruckus over the “one minute of prayer in schools” issue. That was nothing compared to the thousands of children spending a week out of school each year for Religious Release Programs, and the disruptive effect it has on their entire class.

Please, pass this message along to your fellow parents, write your congressmen and contact you local school boards. Convince them to end this harmful program once and for all. Do it for the children.