Indoctrination at preschool, what's an appropriate response?

September 7, 2006 5:55 PM

After interviewing and visiting many, many, preK academies, I picked a secular one for my son (age 3) that has an outstanding curriculum, caring staff and an exemplary record with the state...and most importantly; a part time program. However, I've just discovered that his new teacher is demanding that his class pray before lunch and possibly nap time.

The prayers are of the generic "God" variety, but I object to anyone indoctrinating my child, or forcing them to recite a rote ritual in order to be fed. My husband and I are secular humanists, with possible deist tendencies, but we do not subscribe to, or practice any sort of organized religion. I specifically asked, when interviewing the staff of this academy if there was any religious affiliation whatsoever and was assured that it was a secular business.

We live in the absolute buckle of the bible belt. We are probably the only non-Christians for miles in any given direction. It took months of wait list to get into this school after I decided that they offered the best program. There is no other good alternative program anywhere near us. I've taught The Boy to read, and we're working on math and writing; but the school gives him 12+ hours of week of peer interaction that I can't provide.

I don't know what to do, and I'd like some advice. I'm aware that it's not a "separation" issue, this is a private school. I'm not looking for any legal strategies, or ways to throw a better temper tantrum.

What I would like to know is how other secular humanists would deal with the situation. Would you confront the teacher? Would you talk to the administrator? Would you decide that being "required" to pray a couple of times a week probably isn't going to hurt anything, and not say anything to the school, but instead ramp up your time line for philosophical discussions about the concepts of the Cosmic Blueberry Muffin?

From the religious side of the house, and I know we have some deep thinking philosophical believers amongst us; what would be your response if you found out that a theoretically secular institution was teaching your child a conflicting faith?

posted by dejah420 to education (27 comments total)

I would begin by talking to the principal and finding out the school's official policy.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:01 PM on September 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

(raising hand - happily agnostic here)

If this a dealbreaker for you, pull the kid out of this school and find another one.

If this school truly has "outstanding curriculum, caring staff and an exemplary record with the state," there are no better alternatives, and these things are important to you, suck it up and forget about it. Complaining will call negative social attention to yourself and your child in a way that you probably won't like; if you do that and keep your son in this school, you won't be doing him any favors.

It isn't going to kill your kid to say a quick prayer before meals, and if you live in "the absolute buckle of the Bible Belt," your child is going to be exposed to stuff that is, from your point of view, much more egregious and potentially harmful than this, and that right soon; I grew up in the South, and am familiar with the drill. He is going to be (for example) invited, in a kindly way, by well-meaning people whose beliefs you completely disagree with, to go to church or Sunday School with his friends from class when he's a little older. If you find this sort of thing truly objectionable, consider relocating to another area of the country.

Mumbling through grace at mealtime or saying "now I lay me down to sleep" won't scar him. When he's a little older, turn it into a teachable moment; for now, relax.
posted by enrevanche at 6:10 PM on September 7, 2006

I am atheist and I would grudgingly accept the situation as a byproduct of living in the bible belt. Since there's a waitlist, your kid is expendable to them, and if you caused any trouble they would just boot you out. It's very difficult to be indoctrinated at school when there's a countervailing message at home. It serves as a good lesson that different people believe different things, and Mrs. X believes [foo] while daddy and I believe [bar], and that believing something doesn't make you right and the other person wrong.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:13 PM on September 7, 2006

I would talk with the teacher first, explain your position in a non-confrontational way. This will probably escalate to the principal, and possibly the board of trustees. Are there any other classes/teachers your son could join? That's probably going to be the least amount of work for everyone involved, but you should carefully consider how much this matters to you and how much it matters to your son before you begin any sort of (albeit justified) hullabaloo.
posted by muddgirl at 6:13 PM on September 7, 2006

A little "god" isn't going to hurt him. You're obviously smart and I trust he is as well. If anything, it will give him a deeper understanding of religion. That, to my mind, is a very good thing as most people are in fact religious (even some really bright ones we admire).

I, by the way, grew up in a believing household in Kansas, and I'm not thumping any Bibles (though I understand those who do, I think...)
posted by MarshallPoe at 6:35 PM on September 7, 2006

I grew up in the Bible Belt and prayed in my PUBLIC school classes until 4th grade when the ACLU finally put the wham bammy on the school system in 1982. That was probably the most benign religiousness I was exposed to in my childhood. My mom was a non-denominational Christian, and didnt take us to church or push any particular dogma. It was the "religion" that I was exposed to through my friends by visiting their churches and making an attempt at being a Presbyterian in my teens that really scarred me.

If you plan on staying in the South, you might as well get used to the fact that your kids will be exposed to evangelical people. I can't imagine that these prayers will make much of an impression on a 3 year old... and it might serve as a first opportunity to begin talking to you child about the beliefs of your family versus those of the community.
posted by kimdog at 6:35 PM on September 7, 2006

I agree with what enrevanche said. And then, too, there is this:

As a secular humanist, I suppose you value every person's right to think, and if your child is being raised in a home whose values are built upon that precept, but is being required to conform to some ritual in which he doesn't believe in school, don't you think he's smart enough to sense the dichotomy for himself, and come to terms with it, or ask questions that will help him to do so, when the time comes? Kids living in normal single family homes in a free country are rarely indoctrinated to the point they don't eventually come to decisions about religion for themselves, and given a level playing field, and exposure to all views, yours will, too. Trust your kid's common sense, and when the time comes, send him off to Sunday school, synagogue, and Bible camp with his friends if he wants to go, even if it is just because he likes the coloring books and Koolaid.

As a parent, your job is not to protect him from what you consider objectionable so much as it is to prepare him to understand and live well in diverse world.
posted by paulsc at 6:36 PM on September 7, 2006 [2 favorites]

As I see it, I am a baptised Catholic and attended catholic schools my entire life, but I only go to church twice a year.

My schools had a diverse mix of students from all walks of life, who studied the mandatory religion classes like everybody else. They said morning prayers with everybody else. They weren't necessarily indoctrinated. One of my good friends was a practising Musllim, but she enjoyed learning about another faith, as she believed it gave her a rounded view of the world. (Sort of related aside, she was vice captain of my catholic school.)

Saying a prayer before lunch is unlikely to cause your child to develop a faith that is different to what he is being taught at home. On preview, what SaucyInturder said.

But, that said, if t bothers you, you should speak to the teacher and let them know of your concerns.
posted by cholly at 6:36 PM on September 7, 2006

Find out what the official school policy is on this. If the teacher is in violation of it, then you'll be able to take action. If the prayer is school-supported, there isn't much you can do.

If this is a pre-K academy, it's also implied that your son won't be there for very long - another year or two at most. I wouldn't worry about it until then. The experience won't scar him and it will be more than offset by the lessons he's learning at home, from you. He's young enough that he may not even remember the experience in a year or two.
posted by chrisamiller at 6:38 PM on September 7, 2006

dejah420, generic prayers are a little offputting to me too, but for obviously opposite reasons...probably one of those "rote" traditional prayers -but if it isn't, perhaps you can think of it as teaching him gratitude.

OTOH, when my kids were in public school, a yearly ritual was my trip to talk to their teachers to explain we don't do halloween and to request alternate activities for my sprogs.

Can I suggest to you that perhaps since you are a secular humanist that this isn't maybe as problematic as you think? What I mean by that is that in my case my avoidance of Halloween had to do with my wish to please/not offend God. In your case the person offended is you, not what/who you worship. So basically you won't be a hypocrite if you let this slide, at least in my view.
posted by konolia at 6:39 PM on September 7, 2006

I was in much the same situation and let it slide. If there are no other alternatives, do what you have to do, but there are two things I would change about the way I handled this when it happened with my son. First, I later found out other things about the school that I ended up pulling my son for, and I regretted not pulling him back when they told their first lie (you know, about how they weren't religious at all). Second, I don't think I realized what a slippery slope it was. I sort of wish I'd dug in my heels a little harder, because the combination of no Jesus talk at home and some limited Jesus talk outside the home when he was at such an impressionable age has left him very confused, and we've had to have lots of confused deprogramming sessions spurred by his bizarre questions and commentary, starting at The Lord doesn't like people who wear toothpicks. and the most recent being If Jesus was a baby, why did they nail him up and drain all the blood out of him? Which . . . how to even begin to answer when you don't believe in any of it?

At the time I looked at it as another facet of open-mindedness--I realized that I wouldn't object to him learning about other non-Protestant religions and shouldn't expect him to go through life in the deep South without some exposure. Which would be fine if the exposure were balanced, but it's not. We can teach a little world religion course at home, but somehow the stuff we say at home just doesn't have the same impact on him as a statement by a teacher or other non-primary caretaker, so I guess part of what I'm saying is: don't over-estimate your ability to balance the message. It may be harder than you think.

None of that is very heartening if you truly don't have other options, but . . . there it is. It may be that the little prayers are totally harmless in this case. Just be sure you either truly feel okay with it all or are willing and able to throw the brake when it's time . . . it's easy to get into the habbit of glossing over or putting off decisions about childcare mid-bad plan because it's so hard to make a different, better plan in the middle of a busy life.
posted by littlegreenlights at 6:46 PM on September 7, 2006

All right, sweet! Unhelpful guilt trip!

Oh fer goodness sake - meaning dejah420, to recognize that if people from completely different countries, cultures, and religions would chose to go to that school then you can even more easily find a way to deal with it, you can be assured that many find diversity in such matters more than acceptable and manageable.
posted by scheptech at 7:01 PM on September 7, 2006

When that happened to me at my preschool, my mom told me to just sit quietly while the others prayed. Your kid will probably have to sit through a lot of prayer if you plan to stay in this area, so I don't think it will hurt for him to get used to it now, if you include a simple explanation about how different people believe different things. But I feel your pain. I would be really frustrated to find myself in this situation.
posted by nevers at 7:24 PM on September 7, 2006

Given your location, the best advice I can offer is to echo the sentiment I've heard already -- your job as a parent is to prepare your child for existence in the outside world, not to protect them from it. You're living in the Bible Belt -- it would be silly to try to pretend that the locals aren't all going to suggest, perhaps forcefully, that your choice of faith system is flawed and that their own is simply better.

If nothing else, it gives you a good starting point for several significant talks with your son.
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:00 PM on September 7, 2006

I think sometimes when people grow up in a place where everyone seems to share some characteristic, such as religion, political leanings, racism, love of stir fried dog, whatever, they have innocently never considered the idea that someone might be offended by that thing. This teacher is from the Bible belt and as you say, a non-Christian is a rare sight. Still she went so far as making a "God" prayer instead of a "Jesus" prayer, and some people really think that fixes everything for everyone, and that a prayer like that is secular. So I wouldn't "confront" her, I would just talk to her. You'll have to decide whether you just don't want your son to be forced to participate or whether you just don't want him to be exposed to the practice at all, but you're much more likely to have a mutually agreeable outcome if you'll be satisfied with the first. If the only reason you're sending him to the school is for social interaction, he could get that elsewhere but I doubt that he'll find any purely secular social groups if the demographics there are as you describe.
posted by leapingsheep at 8:02 PM on September 7, 2006

I didn't grow up in the Bible belt, but the county had a lot of pushy members of various denominations (Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, and "other" - not that these groups themselves are necessarily pushy, just some of their members). My parents were quietly secular humanist, and didn't really bother to counter what I heard outside the house, except ideologies they found harmful (homophobia, bigotry against non-Christians or other denominations, misogyny, and so on). I suppose they may have also taught me that some of the forms of proselytization we saw were disrespectful.

Today? I'm a skeptical non-rabid atheist. As others have said, your kid's gonna see it elsewhere, and in more worrying forms. Let it happen, and provide balance (even if it's indirect), and things will work out on their own. PITA, but if you live in an area where that's how people interact, it's something you have to live with. Think of it as the tradeoff for the nice warm weather.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 8:25 PM on September 7, 2006

I think that your kid is eventually going to be exposed to goddism, and so those who say that you're going to need to prepare him for it are correct.

But age 3 is too early. Kids don't acquire the critical thinking skills to be able to distinguish between your ideas of secular humanism and the teacher's Bible-thumping fundamentalism until age 7 or 8 or therabouts, minimum.

At this point, in a three year old's worldview, you and Dad are God, and your child wants nothing more than to please you in all things.

Teacher is also God and your child wants nothing more to please teacher in all things.

So when this comes out - and it will come out, kids parrot what they hear at home - and the teacher starts trying to indoctrinate and convert your kid, guaranteed unhappiness will ensue.

Do you really want to your son to come home some day, crying, and ask why you caused it to be that he, you, and Dad were going to burn in the everlasting fires of Hell for all eternity? What kind of explanation is there for that that a 3 year old could understand?

That's where this is going unless you pull out.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:01 PM on September 7, 2006

Roughly this same question was asked a few days ago on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 10:43 PM on September 7, 2006

I strongly doubt that a kindergarten teacher would lay damnation and hellfire on a three-year-old.

My parents got me through occasional exposures to similar nonsense at a similar age simply by explaining to me at home that "God is goodness", that people pray in lots of different ways, and that just closing my eyes and being quiet until prayer time was finished was perfectly OK.

I didn't end up believing in the existence of an interventionist God or the efficacy of prayer, and if your son doesn't get that stuff drummed into him at home, neither is he likely to. I don't think this needs to be a big problem unless you raise a rumpus and make it one.
posted by flabdablet at 10:56 PM on September 7, 2006

I agree with all those who suggest you address the inconsistency with your son when he's ready.

When I was young, my mother threw a big stink about my school's celebration of Christmas. The fighting drilled into my head that I was somehow profoundly different from the other kids. For me, this was very isolating and confusing, and I just wanted to belong. The meat of the argument was so far over my head, I didn't understand or care. I mean, everlasting soul? I thought 11-year-olds were mature. Religion seemed like random social groupings.

Instead of being anti- them, I wish she had been more pro- us. Give your son the reasons you genuinely believe in your faith, and let him experience the others as much as he's curious.
posted by nadise at 11:30 PM on September 7, 2006

I have to say, I agree with those saying this doesn't have to be a confrontation. You could just politely ask the teacher not to force your son to pray, as you were assured by the administrators of the school that it was a secular school, else you would not have sent your son there. Explain that you have no problem with the teacher's religion (even if you do), but that you prefer to have the choice as to which religion your child is raised to believe in.
posted by antifuse at 12:55 AM on September 8, 2006

It can't hurt to see if this is actually against the school's policy, just to know where this school draws the line and if they draw lines at all or if it's never occurred to them that parents might not automatically woohoo religion in the classroom.

That said, I went to Episcopalian private K-5 school because it was them or the Baptists and my parents were still liberals back then. Went to chapel every Wednesday, sang Christian and Texas-patriotic songs on Fridays, and the ultimate result was that by the time I had to go to public school for junior high I was a really advanced reader and thought it was bad to steal or cheat or be mean to people, which were not sentiments all of my classmates shared because, apparently, nobody'd ever mentioned it to them.

There's indoctrination, and then there's someone else's framework for teaching the basics of being a good person to little kids. Find out which way this particular teacher and school are going and make your decision based on that.

I spent a lot of years doing the church thing while my parents respectfully declined to participate. I think that's one of the coolest things they did for me, letting me make my own decisions there while modeling that you don't have to do it just because almost everyone else is, but not forcing me to set myself so far apart from my peers that I was an outcast.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:23 AM on September 8, 2006

Were I in your shoes the thing that would most disturb me about this would be the disconnect between what you were told and what they're doing, not the prayer itself. As others have said, and I agree, your sprog is going to be exposed to this all over the place - we can't even get them to unfuck the Pledge from how it was b0rked up during the commie hysteria.

I find it troublesome that one of a number of things are going on and none of them would give me a warm fuzzy as a parent. Possibly they told you what you wanted to hear, regardless of any actual policy. Troublesome when you consider what will happen if something actually bad happens - will they brush it under the rug? Alternately they have a policy on this and it's being ignored. Troublesome since it reflects on their overall attitude towards compliance with guidelines. Lastly, perhaps they have a policy and a teacher who is imposing his own will in opposition of that policy. Very troubling since it reflects on that teacher's ethics and on their ability to manage their employees.

I'd request a meeting with the big cheese and have a calm conversation about the situation and how it diverges from what you were told initially.
posted by phearlez at 9:45 AM on September 8, 2006

I had this exact situation when my son was in private kindergarten, in a school that was supposedly not religious.

I asked for a conference with the principal, and expressed my concern. She said -- "oh, it's not a religious thing, we just want the kids to understand that God is watching over them, whatever their religion." Hoo boy. So I told her that he may very well be watching over the other children, but he is not watching over my son, and consequently it is inappropriate, in a supposedly secular school, to make my son participate in what is to him a charade. She said that he need not participate in the prayer if I didn't wish it -- and, in effect, that that was all I was going to get from her.

I didn't want to take him out of that school, so I agonized long over whether I wanted my son to go along to get along or make a stand. I decided to ask him to remain silent during the prayer, because now was as good a time as any to teach him that living your beliefs (or in this case, our family's beliefs) will sometimes require making a respectful but firm stand.

Now he's 14. Now he is 100% on board with the stand-making and the firmness in the cause of his atheism -- but he does struggle with the respectfulness to other views...
posted by Methylviolet at 11:32 AM on September 8, 2006

Gang, thanks! It's hard to pick best answers out of these, because so many of them are good answers. phearlez nailed my thought process almost exactly. I am most concerned that I feel as though they weren't truthful about secularism, and if they weren't telling the truth about that, what else are they doing that I don't know about? (My Mom offered the possibility that they didn't know what "secular" meant...which is even scarier, really.) The thread mention over at Internet Infidels Discussion Board is exactly the prayer my son came home chanting...and we too are in Texas.

I think I've decided to approach it thusly:

I'm going to call the owner of the academy on Monday and ask her if I can visit with her before parent/teacher night on Tuesday.

I'm going to ask her if it's school policy to teach these children a Protestant blessing, or if it's a rogue teacher. If it's school policy, then I'm going to ask if Catholic, Jewish and Islamic (in Arabic) blessings would also be acceptable, and if so, then I would be willing to teach those blessings to them. (Although, don't you know that if my son went in saying "Allah Akkbar, Insallah Allah...I'd have CPS on my ass in a heartbeat.)

I can also show them how a Humanist would give thanks (ya know, farmers, rain, work, etc.) I have Hindu and Buddhist friends who are willing to give lessons on their practices, and my Aunt and Uncle are Zoroastrians, and they're willing to come in and teach that blessing. There's a big ol contingent of Wiccans in Dallas that I'm sure I can tap, as well as the Krishnas.

If they find teaching alternate blessings to be problematic, then we have a much bigger problem, because at that point what they're doing *is* indoctrination. From my perspective, if they're willing to get on the slippery slope of religion at the lunch table, then I'm willing to push the toboggan.

I would hate to pull him out of this school. He loves the school. I realize that living here in Texas, he's going to be exposed to the God people, and I'm ok with it...when I'm there to temper the message...but if I don't even know it's being taught, then I can't do my job as a parent.

I want to know what other doctrine they're exposing him to, if any. I think at 3, he's not anywhere near old enough to be capable of "taking a stand", nor should he be put in the position of making himself an outcast because he's not being raised a Christian. (I mean, the poor kid is going to have enough problems explaining his weird Mom to people. Hee.)

If the school policy is that prayers before lunch are not, in fact, religious activity, then I probably will have to pull him out of the school. Because if I can't trust what they're telling me, then I certainly don't trust them with the most important thing in my life.
posted by dejah420 at 6:22 PM on September 8, 2006

Hmmmm, it's not letting me mark more than one answer as best. I'll try again with *shudder* IE, and then bug report it.
posted by dejah420 at 6:44 PM on September 8, 2006

FWIW, I'm a born-again Christian, and I agree with phearlez.

The problem is NOT whether the prayer is as generic as possible, whether you'll have to make friends with people of faith later on, etc. The school lied to you! Although maybe it's a sin of ignorance, if I can use that term -- it sounds as if they don't understand what "secular" means, Lord love 'em. I think the "alternate blessing" probe is a useful one to test their definition. (One warning: although multiple prayer options probably falls under the definition of ecumenical prayer, which may not help them understand what the term "secular" means -- it may underline their original generic-God prayers as okay as long as they don't explicitly contradict another person's religion... and you are back in the same boat but in murkier waters.)

A concerned chat with the principal is a good idea, but you may want to see if other parents -- and these will be SHs like yourself, people of other faiths, or even BACs like me -- feel the same way. One parent's complaints may be easily dismissed, but two or three or more families on your side will reveal a discontent that (I hope) they will deal with properly and respectfully.

Given the general atmosphere you describe of where you live, you may have some success by stating not "I am a secular humanist" but rather "I feel very strongly that religious prayer of any kind ought to be left to parents to teach to their children."

Good luck.
posted by mdiskin at 5:47 AM on September 10, 2006