LEBANON, PENNSYLVANIA
Public School Teachers Attend Mosque
To Better Serve Muslim Students
SEE: http://beginningandend.com/pennsylvania-public-school-teachers-attend-mosque-to-better-serve-muslim-students/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
The Lebanon High School faculty taxpayer-funded trip to a local mosque.
A group of teachers, faculty and administrators from a public school district in Pennsylvania took a full day trip to a mosque to learn about the religion of Islam, watch a worship service and ways they can better serve and accommodate the Muslim students in their schools. This type of trip is yet another example of the growing push to make all manner of exceptions for Islamic students while at the same time pushing the Bible and Christian expression out of schools.
An All-Day Public School Trip For Islam
The school district of Lebanon Valley, Pennsylvania sponsored a trip for its teachers and administration to a local mosque to learn about the religion of Islam. The group, which included the superintendent of the district, wanted training to better serve the Muslim students attending their public schools.
According to sources:
To bridge that cultural divide, about 50 district staff members attended an in-service workshop on Monday that included a trip to the Lebanon Valley Mosque. While there they learned about the practice of Islam, watched an afternoon Muslim prayer service and where treated to a lunch of Moroccan cuisine.
It was the second year that the workshop was offered to the staff, according to Fred Shattls, director of the district’s English as a Second Language department. The workshop was led by Mohamed Omar, a former teacher’s aide and Arabic translator for the district who also served a year as president of the mosque…The workshop began at the high school where Omar spoke about the histories and cultures of several Arab countries and the differences in their educational systems to that in the U.S.
At noon, the teachers took a bus to the mosque, located not far away at 13th and Florence streets. Following Islamic practice, each took off their shoes before entering the prayer room where they took a seat on a maroon-colored carpet with intricate designs. (source).
At the mosque teachers and staff were able to ask about the religious practices of Muslim students and how to fit them into the school day. All of this was done to incorporate Muslim worship and show respect for the religious beliefs of the Muslim students at the public schools in the area.
A Blatant Double Standard
William Swimmer was suspended for wearing a shirt that mentioned Jesus Christ.
The faculty Islamic field trip was just one of numerous examples of public schools catering to Muslim students while shunning Christianity and restricting the free speech of Christian students. Below are just a few examples where students who believe in The Lord Jesus Christ found their right of free expression restricted:
- A Canadian High school student was suspended for five days for wearing a t-shirt that read “Life Is Wasted Without Jesus.” (source).
- A 16-year old California student was suspended after refusing his public school’s orders to stop talking about his new-found Christian faith and bringing his Bible to school. (source).
- A 10-year old student assigned to write an essay about anyone she admired was told that her essay about looking up to God would not be accepted and was ordered to remove the essay from school grounds. (source).
- At various high schools across the United States, High School valedictorians have been told by schools they were not permitted to discuss their Christian faith or even mention Jesus Christ in their graduation speeches. (source).
In all these incidents the public schools justified their actions against Christian students on the basis of “separation of church” and state – the notion that a public school should never accommodate or promote a religious belief. At the same time public schools have gone out of their way to cater to the Muslim religion. One public high school provided an all-girls prom for Muslims in accordance with Islamic teachings on female etiquette. A San Diego elementary school created an extra recess period to give Muslim children more time to pray. A Michigan High School football team moved its practices to midnight in order for students fasting for the Islamic holiday of Ramadan to be able to eat and drink water at night (when the religion permits it). High school students were kept at practice until 3AM (then having to return to school for class the next morning between 7:30-8:00AM) all in the name of religious observance. Many public universities offer prayer rooms, foot baths and Muslim ritually approved food. Why are there no complaints about “separation” of church and state when it comes to the special treatment for Muslim students at public institutions?
A photo from the Geography class at a Lumberton Public School in Texas.
Even teachings of Islam are promoted in public schools. At a Texas public school a teacher dressed girls up in Islamic burqas and taught a lesson that stated Allah is “the Almighty God” and referred to Islamic terrorists as “freedom fighters”. (source).
Pray for the public school system and its agenda which is clearly hostile to Biblical Christianity while catering to Islam. If school leaders are going to visit mosques during work hours, pray that taxpayer money start paying for visits to churches as well. As society moves farther away from the Bible and grows more hostile towards Jesus Christ and the Gospel, Christians and Bible-believing churches need to be that much more outspoken in sharing their faith whether the public school system supports it or not.
_______________________________________________________“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.“ – Jude 1:3.
FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA SCHOOLS
Fairfax County School Board Votes To Include Gender Identity Issues Into Their Curriculum
Fairfax County School Board Votes To Include Gender Identity Issues Into Their Curriculum
School Board adding transgender topic to 7th grade class
SEE: http://the-trumpet-online.com/school-board-adding-transgender-topic-7th-grade-class/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Editor’s Note: It’s past time to remove your children from public (and almost all private) schools. Also notice how the sodomite loving reporter gives the last word to the sodomites.
washingtonpost.com
The Fairfax County School Board has approved expanding the school system’s sex education curriculum to include teaching teenagers in grades 7 through 10 about gender identity and transgender issues.
The 10-to-2 vote Thursday night came amid shouts of anger and howls of frustration from a raucous crowd that largely stood in opposition to the curriculum changes.
The board’s decision centered on changes to the Family Life Education curriculum across all grades. The revisions included adding lessons on gender issues for middle and high school students. But some of those who opposed the changes questioned whether the revisions would trickle down to the lower grades.
Opponents also expressed concern that some of the revisions would move certain sensitive lessons out of the Family Life Education curriculum and into health class, which would remove parents’ ability to opt-out their children from learning the material. The health class is a required course; Family Life Education is not.
Andrea Lafferty, a Fairfax resident who is president of the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative lobbying group, described the lesson changes as overreach by the School Board.
“Parents: Do you want your children in kindergarten to hear about same-sex marriage under the guise of families?” Lafferty asked.
Many in the crowd responded loudly: “No.”
The vote came a day before the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to allow gay marriage in all 50 states. In May, the School Board voted to expand the school system’s anti-discrimination policy to include protections for transgender students and staff.
In video testimony played at the meeting, Adam Hiatt said the curriculum changes should not be approved because they would go “against the teaching and faith of most major world religions.”
“Today’s version of the Nazi Germany description would be something like this: ‘First they came for traditional marriage, and I did not speak out because I wanted to be tolerant,” Hiatt said. “Then they came for the children in our schools, and I did not speak out. . . . Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”
In response to vehement opposition that board members received via e-mail, the board appeared prepared to delay voting on the issue until July. Board member Patty Reed (Providence) offered a proposal to wait a month before voting on the new curriculum. Board member Elizabeth Schultz (Springfield) brought up a motion to table the matter until a later date.
At the last minute, the board moved ahead and overwhelmingly voted in support of the lesson changes, with Reed and Schultz the only votes against the new curriculum. In a slight concession, the board also voted to move some of the earlier proposed lessons back to their original place in the Family Life Education curriculum, allowing parental opt-outs for children.
Robert Rigby, adviser to the West Potomac High School student lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group, said he was proud that the School Board voted to approve the curriculum changes.
“The unruly crowd seemed to be trying to bully the School Board,” Rigby said.
“But the board showed the same courage in the face of those shouts that it showed in May, when it voted to add gender identity to the FCPS anti-discrimination policy.”