The spring spheres thing is cracking me up. I am totally for respecting of all religious beliefs/non-beliefs in school, but sometimes, the attempt is HIGH-larious.

Stuff like "Spring Spheres" and "Holiday Trees" just annoys me -- either celebrate the holiday, or don't. Don't try to make it seem like you're being inclusive by just changing the names of things.

I sort of wonder what kids do in grammar school nowadays, because I swear all we did in the first 2 years was learn about holidays. I jhust figured now they learn about more holidays

At a school I taught at (99% Hispanic, almost all Catholic) the slightly nutso superintendent wanted to ban all mention of Halloween as it was a "Satanic" holiday... but we openly celebrated Day of the Dead and Cinco de Mayo.

I sweetly reminded him that we were a federally-funded, non-denominational school, and if a holiday was being banned on religious grounds, it was a violation. And that basically, if a kid WAS a Satanist (of which there were none, of course; they just wanted the Halloween party and costume day we'd been planning for weeks, and that the principal had approved for kids and teachers), he could do jack-shit about it. And participation was NOT mandatory.

So...we couldn't call it Halloween, but we did have the dress-up day the kids really wanted. It was "Costume Day" and a "Costume Party." Dia de los Muertos was still celebrated, but I had no problems with that,as it's a huge cultural thing (and fun) and participation was totally not mandatory. You picks your battles...

high school kid from a private school wanted to give out Easter eggs to the public school third-graders as a community service project, and the third grade teacher said she could only do it if she called them Spring Spheres.

Actually this was reported on a very conservative religious web site, and no one has been able to prove whether the teenager, the teacher, or the class actually exist.

I don't remember my elementary school doing much of anything for Easter. The winter concert was always a source of some tension, with various parents counting how many songs there were about Christmas and Chanukah and winter and various other things, and debates about whether "Light One Candle" is a religious song or not, and all sorts of stuff like that. The spring concert was just songs. Sometimes there would be a theme of some sort, but the theme never had anything to do with any holiday.

ita, are they not giving you the dosage you need? Os is it not working for you?

Actually this was reported on a very conservative religious web site, and no one has been able to prove whether the teenager, the teacher, or the class actually exist.

Hmm. According to [link] , the teenager (or alleged teenager) was interviewed on a radio show, but the school district won't confirm anything.

Even if the story were true, one teacher coming up with a silly phrase doesn't amount to anything more than one teacher coming up with a silly phrase.

From that article:

True or not, Spheregate follows a few other well-known non-promotions of holidays. The city of Seattle purposely leaves out the word “Easter” from its annual community-center “spring egg hunts.”

This is the sort of thing that drives me nuts. You want to have an Easter egg hunt? Then call it an Easter egg hunt and deal honestly with the questions about how it relates to religion. Or, have some other kid activity that has nothing whatsoever to do with a religious holiday. Trying to pretend that an egg hunt isn't Easter-related is ridiculous.

Don't try to make it seem like you're being inclusive by just changing the names of things.

100% this. THIS.

I believe that people don't really understand what multiculturalism and inclusiveness means. These misunderstandings become stuff on one end of the spectrum like renaming things to show inclusivness and on the opposite side of the spectrum asserting that Black people want to see White people enslaved. Oh, and this is not hyperbole.

Ultimately, power and privilege are a big more complicated than easter egg hunts, and yet easter egg hunts aren't really the problem.

The city of Seattle purposely leaves out the word “Easter” from its annual community-center “spring egg hunts.”

The more I think about it, the more I don't understand this. The word "Easter" got associated with Jesus by the Church putting their holy day on top of the Easter celebration of spring/fertility. So they're trying to disassociate egg hunts from Jesus by not calling them "Easter", right? Do they think the word "Easter" somehow refers to Jesus? What do they think "Easter" means? Do they realize the egg hunts are a relic of a pagan ritual, or do they just know eggs have nothing to do with Jesus?