Learning to Live with One Another's Different Beliefs - My Reaction to the Texas School Board Conservatizing History and the Supreme Court Refusing to Hear a Case on Ave Maria

In our attempt to sterilize the educational setting from religion, we make education one step more irrelevant.  Our religious beliefs are part of our lives, and it is natural for people to disagree with one another on what they believe.  Instead of ignoring that we have different religious beliefs, what if we taught students to understand and love one another despite having religious beliefs that might conflict at times?  Acting like we do not have any religious beliefs and making us hide them will not help us learn to live peaceably with one another outside of the educational setting. 

Instead of boards like the one in Texas sanitizing history through the removal of historical figures they disagree with and inserting people that exalt their ideals, we should let the students delve into the controversial people.  We need to realize that both sides of the political spectrum are guilty in having books written to promote their agenda.  The conservatives in Texas are reacting against a history that ignored conservative teachings.  Ignoring historical figures and events that disagree with our worldview is not history; it's brainwashing.  What if we actually used education to encourage people to think rather than as a surgical object to brainwash students to our way of thinking? 

Too often history has degraded into the rote memorization of facts and dates and not an understanding of people, how they relate to the world, and how we can transform the world into a better place.  That's why history is boring for many people when it should be exciting.

We don't need a sterile environment to learn.  Just the opposite, we need an environment that will challenge our thinking and help us to learn to live successfully in the world around us.  We will each define success differently based upon our beliefs, but that is the beauty of humanity. 

All of these thoughts stemmed from an article that talked about Ave Maria being refused at a graduation ceremony: The Right Not To Be Offended: The Supreme Court And Religion.  The Supreme Court refused to hear a case in which a superintendent did not allow a woodwind ensemble to perform an instrumental version of Ave Maria.  The only people that won from that are people who don't want to expose their children to beauty.  That does not seem like a good victory at all.