“We’ve been spending a lot of time on Martin Luther King at (our parish) school.”
“Have you? What do you mean by ‘a lot of time’?”
“We’ve been singing songs, reading about his life, studying his speech — we’re going to write poems next.”
“That is a lot of time.”
“Is there anything … wrong with that?”
“There’s nothing wrong with spending time learning about Martin Luther King — he made important contributions to our country. That seems excessive, though.”
“But he was a Christian, right?”
“Yes, but he’s generally celebrated as a secular figure, and Martin Luther King Day is a secular holiday. If they’re having you spend that much time on MLK, then you should spend three times as much studying, say, St. Joseph.”
22 January 2013
22 January 2013 at 6:36 pm
Bravo! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a very brave man, but he is not the Redeemer and Lord. The amount of time spent on each of those two figures should be reversed!
22 January 2013 at 7:51 pm
We never spent that much time on George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, for goodness’ sake. (The Pilgrims, maybe, but that was to kill time before Thanksgiving.)
23 January 2013 at 8:41 am
As homeschoolers, we take off the national holidays my husband gets off from work. A few years ago, my offspring were perplexed when they found out there’d be no work to do the coming Monday. “Martin Luther King?!? What?!? A HOLIDAY?!? What did he do that was good? I thought you didn’t like that guy!” It took a few (bewildering) minutes before I realized they were confusing Martin Luther King with Martin Luther.
That’s a story that would horrify The Powers That Be. Those neglected homeschoolers, deprived of their paeans to secular heroes.
By the bye, their younger siblings are now more carefully educated…..
23 January 2013 at 3:42 pm
Just wait until you see how much time is spent on Barak Obama down the road…
23 January 2013 at 10:50 pm
The messiah Obama …. http://yotamak.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341c145e53ef010536f053df970c-800wi
26 January 2013 at 6:13 pm
Too late! My son attends a Lakota school and on his class work assignments one of them was named “Barack Obama Reading Comprehension”. The class had to read a book about Obama and there were worksheets to test to see of the kids understood the book. My 9 year old told me, ” Mom, they are trying to get me to like Obama, but I am resisting!”