odd bits

today's been kind of a strange day. but then again it's been a strange week.

i'm tutoring a student who is writing a paper on "prayer in public schools" which is an interesting topic. naturally in this situation it is decidely best for me to keep my opinions to myself, but it brings up a lot of interesting memories for me about my school days and issues of religious expression.
let's just preface all of this by mentioning that part of my schooling was spent in the south. and not just anywhere but spittin' distance from the land of pat robertson and jerry fallwell. needless to say but i'm sure if you've read any of my writings you could assume that there are few things we'd agree on, me and those two fellers.
a consequence of living in such a patently religious community was that schooling had a decidedly christian-right influenced religious flavor sometimes--and in some ways--although not always. some teachers were obviously religious and others were better at maintaining the kind of neutrality the supreme court likes to see in a public school. some teachers would slide some religious discussion in with their content areas. and i went to the kind of school where we had "moments of silence" and the christian students had prayer circles from time to time. we also had prayers at some after school events and graduation.
did any of this particularly bother me? not really, although it could get hokey from time to time. but i could defend myself adequately in this environment when necessary when the southern baptists got a bit too carried away with themselves in a zeal to save my soul. "you must be a devil worshipper!" yeah, you MUST be right, why don't you give yourself a pat on the back because you are obviously so observant. i'm not gonna give you a fullblown essay on the topic of prayer in school, but i will say that public expressions of faith don't particularly bother me, i just don't like intolerance. intolerance in any form is odious to me.
ironically when i taught adult reading, there were no restrictions on religious discussion in the classroom since it was not a public school or a captive audience situation, so we would do this regularly. of course we also freely talked about politics and other controversial issues. i kind of enjoyed having the freedom to have these discourses and feel like having an open environment to talk about otherwise suppressed aspects of adult life made our classroom environment more interesting. of course this requires a certain consensus to keep things civil, which i realize is not possible in all situations. as a teacher i'm sure this issue will come up over and over again , and i'll have to think long and hard how to deal with it, but i think i tend to lean towards the side of openness of expression. but since i personally get tired of racial slurs and homophobia and am perfectly willing to speak out against these, students who go off on some kind of rant can expect me to clamp down on anything that strays beyond the boundaries of civil discourse.

on a completely different note, on the way home i found a couple of really nice ED books Educational Psychology and What Is It About Me You Can't Teach?: An Instructional Guide for the Urban Educator at goodwill and bunch of striped toe-socks. i'm a happy camper now. and i finally got to talk to my friend j-- who i've been locked in a vicious game of phone tag with.