Guest Post by Morbo
Let me apologize at the outset for linking to a piece on World Net Daily, a kook right site, but it seems to be the only place out there following an interesting story out of Albemarle County, Va.
Some public school teachers there are throwing a fit because they have been told to place copies of a flier advertising a summer camp for atheists and freethinkers in folders that go home with the students every Friday. This distribution system, often called “backpack mail,” is very common in public schools around the nation.
The fliers advertise Camp Quest, which operates camps in five states and one Canadian province. It described as the “first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural, lifestance. Campers are encouraged to think for themselves and are not required to hold any particular view.”
If you visit the World Net Daily site (just try to avoid looking at the repulsive ads on the side) you can see the flier. It’s pretty harmless. Yet apparently at least a few teachers went bonkers and refused to distribute it. One anonymous teacher told the site, “I took a stand and did not send it home. Other teachers did the same thing.”
“I took a stand”? How about, “I violated a federal court order” instead?
This isn’t up to the teachers. Public schools in Virginia and the other states in the U.S. 4th Circuit are required to put this material in the backpacks. This stems from a case a few years ago when a fundamentalist Christian parent demanded the right to distribute a flier to kids advertising a religious camp. The school system refused. The inevitable lawsuit followed, and the federal appeals court ruled that denying the religious group access was a form of viewpoint discrimination.
Now that fundamentalists have this access, other groups want it too — among them some local atheists. By law, all groups must be treated equally. If teachers are unhappy about some of the material going home, they have no right to take it upon themselves to toss fliers that offend them. Pretty simple, right? (Fliers from outside groups include disclaimers noting that they are not school sponsored.)
As it so happens, I don’t think public schools should have to distribute fliers unrelated to their core educational mission. I don’t believe it’s wise to compel Albemarle officials to put fliers from Camp Quest or Jesus Camp in kids’ backpacks. Personally, I’m tired of sorting through fliers for karate clubs in my kids’ Friday folders when all I really want to read are announcements from the school. But I acknowledge that if one outside group is given access, all must be. Equal treatment is the rule. If the Christians gets access to the backpack, so do the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists and so on.
The World Net site notes that some teachers consider the Camp Quest flier offensive or against their religious beliefs. Too bad. I’d like to point out that it was their fundamentalist allies that opened up this forum — so deal with it.
Officials in the Albemarle school system must make sure their teachers are abiding by the law and not allowing their personal prejudices to trample on the rights of others. Teachers who refuse to abide by the equal-treatment rule should get to go to their own special camp this summer. Call it “Camp Constitution.”