School Calendar Continues To Raise Tensions about Religion

By Lexi Matthews ’18

Decorating the classroom with shamrocks and wearing green are activities most American students have grown up expecting to participate in each St. Patrick’s Day. For students of Bruce Vento Elementary in Minnesota, however, March 17 will simply pass as another school day. February saw the banning of ‘dominant’ holidays in the school, including Thanksgiving, Halloween,Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

Pupils of Bruce Vento are no longer permitted to participate in any school activities considered non-inclusive to all religions, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Principal Scott Masini has received some communal praise for his work of “eliminating a dominant view suppressing all others,” and encouraging a wider acceptance of diversity in school. On a larger scale, the national press has slammed Masini for depriving children of harmless fun with overbearing political correctness.

The school’s decision and the reactions that have followed stand as proof of a tricky controversy for public school systems nationwide. Holidays have long been of large value to the country, with some traditions dating back over two hundred years. Yet, as people of countless different races and beliefs have made America their home, it has become increasingly difficult to pinpoint which holidays can be considered ones that all can call their own.

Many believe the acknowledgment of holidays in school is impossible without unfairness or even offense towards non-celebrators. Others argue kids drawing leprechauns in class hardly qualifies as offensive.

It also raises the difficult question of how far systems must reach to include everyone; by celebrating days sacred to large groups, smaller groups will likely take offense and demand they too have their special days commemorated. As more groups are allowed inclusion, it proves harder to draw a line for niche groups of few celebrators and risk an uproar, as having implied some groups are superior to others. Schools must then choose to be extremely selective, denounce holidays altogether, or acknowledge dozens more holidays.

MCPS has not been immune to this controversy either. After a seven-to-one vote from the Board of Education, the 2015-16 calendar features a new official calendar that, like DC and Fairfax’s calendars, never explicitly mentions any holidays. While the same days will be given off for “high absenteeism,” their religious references have been erased. The decision comes after backlash from the Muslim community last April, following MCPS’s refusal to acknowledge the holiday Eid al-Adha, and the claims of discrimination that followed.

The move came as a great relief for the Board, who avoided a major confrontation with Muslims without having to add more off-days to the school year—but the problem didn’t end there.

Local parents were quick to chime in that the move was a ‘clumsy’ quick-fix that evades the larger issue of lack of diverse religious representation in the county. “We really just alienated everybody,” said Michael Durso, the sole board member who voted against the act.

While the seven who voted in favor responded to cries of anti-Muslim intolerance that there was ‘no other clear-cut solution,’ Howard County Public Schools has proven quite the opposite; as of this January, Chinese New Year, Eid al-Adha, and the Hindu holiday Diwali will officially be added to Christian and Jewish holidays as off-days for the school system.

It is unlikely MCPS will take an approach as polarizing as Bruce Vento’s anytime soon, but also equally unlikely that they will follow in Howard County’s open-armed footsteps. Still, the county certainly isn’t catching a break in their ‘neutrality,’ so time will tell how MCPS can solve this complex problem.