THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 5, 1994 TAG: 9412020031
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
So your Nov. 21 front page tells us that Tabernacle church members are doing their best to foster religion in Ukrainian schools. So Newt Gingrich is gloating over his plans for a constitutional amendment so that religion can be fostered in American schools.
Leaving aside the appropriateness of allowing any sectarian crusading by Ukrainian evangelists in the public schools, I heartily resent the suggestion (as it has come so very many times from zealots on the Christian right) that American secular education is producing godless and valueless children. Do they really believe, as a comment in the article suggests, that lying is fondly permitted at Blair Middle School?
Ridiculous!
Do they really think that people are prohibited from praying inside those walls?
If the inhabitants of the former Soviet Union, so eager to trade in the authoritarianism of communism for the authoritarianism of forced religion, wish to find a new way to keep an unfree population in check, if they can't get the hang of free education for free people the second time around, at least we do not have to accept their model.
Moreover, I invite Ukrainians, Norfolk residents and your reporters and editors to come look at some of the young people attending Norfolk Public Schools. Generation after generation, the Norfolk Public Schools have graduated students who excel academically and who display a civic consciousness and generosity that we all benefit from.
And, yes, many of them are people of faith - many faiths, in fact. Their faith is a matter of choice and conviction, not compulsion, and if one looks closely enough even in 1994, one might see a great deal of faith, a great deal of godliness, at work in the dedication of the teachers in the public schools - and in the way in which young people are learning every day not only algebra and Japanese, but how to respect the dignity of every human being, and to live a life that is generous and tolerant in a free society.
CONNIE JONES
Norfolk, Nov. 22, 1994 by CNB