February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
History would seem to instruct us that suppressing, banning and burning are the methods of the intolerant, not the open-minded. When you hate something different — an idea, a book, an entire group of people — you legislate it away, you bar discussion, you repress those who dissent from correct thinking.
This, it would seem, is the essence of intolerance.
And yet the members of the Maplewood-South Orange school district this year chose to emulate the tactics of intolerance in order to show just how tolerant they are. How so? Not by simply banning the singing of Christmas carols with a religious theme, but by banning even instrumental versions of such songs. One of the board’s apparatchiks explained that these tunes could not be played because people know the words and so would recognize the religious context of the pieces. And so the wall separating church and state would crumble.
One parent expressed great relief over this decision, saying that as a non-Christian, he and his family felt excluded when religious Christmas carols were played at school-sponsored concerts. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this was the logic behind the board’s decision: Banning religious music was necessary so that nobody will feel excluded. The buzzword in society today is, of course, inclusive.
To be called “inclusive” is to be hailed as right-thinking and modern. Everybody from public school bureaucrats to politicians to public relations executives trot out the word “inclusive” to describe their favorite projects and causes. If you want praise from all the right people, you’d better be inclusive.
And so the members of my local school board have made their holiday concerts more inclusive by, first of all, using the phrase “holiday concert,” and, secondly, by making sure nobody feels excluded should the band strike up a tune that might be recognized as containing religious themes if the words were sung, which, by the way, they are not.
If the good people who run my local public schools really are concerned about inclusion, they have lots of work ahead of them. Don’t non-jocks feel excluded when schools celebrate the achievements of their athletic teams? And what about the C and D students (surely nobody gets an F anymore — that would be too judgmental), who must feel left out when other students make the honor roll (assuming that honor rolls and the National Honor Society haven’t been banned as “elitist”).
What about tolerance? A truly tolerant school board wouldn’t ban religious music, but would include as much religious music as possible. What would be wrong with a “holiday concert” that includes not only religious Christmas music, but music from other traditions as well — Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist? Heck, if atheists and agnostics have a favorite end-of-year song, play that one, too. Why not?
People who are genuinely tolerant respect difference. The problem with so many of those who preach tolerance today is that they are tolerant only of their views. They certainly do not believe that tolerance ought to extend to red-state evangelical Christians (or blue-state Orthodox Jews). They deserve only contempt and loathing, not tolerance.
It is an odd turn of events that in a nation that remains overwhelmingly Christian, people have become almost sheepish about the phrase “Merry Christmas.” Thanks to the notoriety my town achieved because of its intolerant school board, friends have asked if they risk arrest by offering Christmas greetings. (They’re kidding, I think.)
Actually, if you are looking for true tolerance, don’t look to school boards — look to American society itself, which has gone out of its way to accommodate non-Christians and non-believers in the end-of-year festivities. America commercialized the story of St. Nicholas, allowing non-Christians a secular alternative to the religious holiday. The use of phrases like “Season’s Greetings” and “Happy Holidays” are a populist acknowledgement that not everybody in this multicultural society celebrates Christmas. But we can all wish each other well.
The contrast in spirit between my local school board and my local Catholic school is instructive. While the public school officials were banning sacred music and keeping a watchful eye out for violations of their version of tolerance, teachers in Our Lady of Sorrows in South Orange asked fifth-grade students to research an assortment of end-of-year holidays — none of them Christmas. My daughter did a project on Hanukkah. Others were assigned Ramadan and Kwanzaa and several others I frankly had never heard of. But I know about them now.
Now that’s toleration. That’s how you show respect for diversity. That’s how you prepare children for a multicultural world.
The public schools issued their fiats against religious music. The Catholic school embraced the holidays of others, so that they might better understand themselves and their neighbors.
It’s not hard to figure out which institution has a better understanding of what tolerance really means.
Happy holidays.