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Religion in the schools

Last week when I was on my blogging hiatus, I came across two cases of spiritual/religious advocacy in our schools, one at Stephenson Elementary in Grandview Heights, the other at Ohio State. On May 24, Channel 10 ran a story on using yoga to fight obesity in children:

More and more public schools, yoga centers and gyms across the U.S. are beginning to offer yoga classes for children, 10TV's Heather Pick reported.

"Yoga for kids is a little different than yoga for adults," said instructor Julia Sims Haas. "We use a lot of the same poses but it's presented in a fun way."

Sims teaches young children yoga techniques as part of the Afterschool Adventures Program at Stevenson Elementary School.

"It really encourages kids to learn about their body, learn about the world around them, and get in touch with themselves so they can have a healthy approach and lifestyle," Haas said.

Kathleen Lemanek, a pediatric psychologist at Columbus Children's Hospital, said that everyone, including children, has some stress in their lives.

"What is going to stress a second grader is going to be very different than a tenth grader or, for us, but anything that's unexpected, unpredictable that can be stressful," Lemanek said.

She said that yoga teaches children to breathe more efficiently, calm their minds and strengthen balance, gain flexibility and improve posture.

They recommended that your pediatrician give approval, but you might also check with your pastor. Yoga is an integral part of the Hindu religion. It is not just an exercise program, although it is presented that way. It's about as honest as having the children gather for afterschool story time and then finding out the only stories presented were from the Bible, and at the end of each story, there was prayer time. That would never make it past the school board or principal, would it? But Yoga? Oh, it's just about fitting your body into prayerful positions to worship various Hindu dieties.

Then I was researching digital archives at Ohio State. The fancy name for it is "institutional repositories," or at OSU, Knowledge Bank. So I was looking through the list, noting how inconsistent the catalog subject terms were, learning that each department makes up their own (unfortunately), when I came across a video presentation of a lecture on the battle between Black Hawk and Keokuk back in the early 19th century. That sounded pretty interesting, so I brought it up. Imagine my surprise when the faculty member of Ohio State who introduced the guest speaker, gave sort of a laudatory praise to "Our Grandmother", who by definition in that culture is the Creator, Supreme Being and Author of Life. A lecture on some aspect of Christian history or literature or Crusades battle would not open with a prayer to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (whom Christians accept as Creator, Supreme Being and Author of Life). At least in my many years at the university, a department sponsored event didn't open this way, although special invited guests for para-church organizations using a university room might.

So why the double standard for Christianity and other religions?