Students, the voice of modern religion

     After our class discussion about the teaching of the Theory of Evolution in public schools I reminisced back to my time at Westfield High School in Hamilton County. Personally, I couldn't imagine a time in my life where God hasn't been apart of it in some way, shape, or form. I didn't really notice, though, how much God was or wasn't apart of my schooling until the high school years came along. In particular, I think back to a day in biology where we were learning about evolution. The teacher tried to tell us that a penguin could turn into a giraffe and everyone was just like, "hold up, do you really expect us to believe that?". Now let me state this, WHS is a school filled with Christians.

     Using that day as an example, I question why both evolution AND creationism aren't taught in a public school setting. Students should be informed by as many things as possible and then their opinions and beliefs can be rightfully formed. That is a problem that I see in today's society. We aren't allowing the youth to grow in the best possible ways out of the fear that someone might be offended. Well guess what, those who use to be the ones offending are now the offended because of limits that have been brought upon by our tip toe society.

     As I had stated, Hamilton County is a predominant Christian environment. It is unfortunate that schools cannot officially teach religion because the students are clamoring for it. We had a student lead us in prayer at graduation, we had after school Christian groups, our sports team have pastors that lead us in prayer before and after games, and so on and so forth. We want to be able to learn, but the government does not allow it due to the fear of lawsuits from those who are offended. Well guess what, why not teach a Religions of the World class like we have here at HU so, again, the younger generation can be taught in an educated way instead of just one side of the spectrum.

     In conclusion, an article out of Texas was brought to my attention. A school had banned pre-game prayer before a football game because, as I have said, fear out of being sued by an atheist organization. What ended up happening, though, is that the cheerleaders lead the crowd in prayer anyone because they saw it as "the right thing to do". As a former mascot I couldn't be prouder of these girls. This story drills my point even further that students want religion incorporated into their education and I believe that we are doing a disservice by not allowing such thing to hold true.

     Younger generations have showed time and time again they will stand up for what they believe in whereas it is the older generation that tells them not to. If we had taught religion in the years prior then maybe the current generation wouldn't be discombobulated with where they stand in the realm of faith. I wouldn't say that we should be on a crusade of sorts to put Christianity in schools, but instead be on a crusade to educate in multiple realms of religion so an educated thought process can be concluded. What exactly are we teaching the youth of this world if they are prohibited from/don't have the freedom to learn in a way that they yearn for? If we want the world to be more accepting of others than we must first teach how to accept in the first place.

Article: http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/09/19/tennessee-cheerleaders-lead-football-crowd-lords-prayer-defying-schools-ban