[SassyLeo]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

I think there should be a pre-determined amount of School Breaks without any official naming of them--besides a Break.

In Australia, the year was divided into terms--after every three months of school, a two week break was given. In December/January it was summer break which lasted approximately six weeks if I recall. I really liked this system; there was always a break to look forward to instead of long stretches without a rest (for all concerned). There was no *official* naming or links/ties to any religious holiday--they existed solely as School Breaks.

In North America, yes some of our Breaks were designed around Christian holidays; however, I think any affiliation to the Christian roots of these holidays should now be removed--in a pluralistic society and in a publicly funded system, I don't see the need to favour one religious holiday over any other any longer.

I am not sure to do about Easter though; how to get rid of that (in Canada, students get Good Friday AND Easter Monday off) without calling it Easter--and this is in public schools. However, we also have one religion whose school boards are entirely government funded (R.C) in two provinces.

I don't want more religious holidays included in a public school's calendar, and I want the ones that exist renamed into neutral non-religious breaks.


If families want to remove their children for a religious holiday, that is their prerogative and all they need to do is call in their absence.

You said it way better than I. Thank you.

Originally Posted by UofMfan

I haven't voted because I don't see a choice in your poll that reflects my opinion, which is the same as HSIN.

I believe in the separation of Church and State, even if said separation is getting blurrier by the minute. And also believe that there should be breaks during the school year, otherwise there would be burn out in the parts of both the students and teachers. I think those breaks should be named according to the time of the year, season or whatnot, but not to reflect any one religion.

I live in a country were we have 17 legal holidays, At least ten are religious. The country was also legally known, until about 5 years ago, as "The Country of Our Sacred Heart", even though our Constitution, rewritten in 1991 clearly defines the separation of Church and State. The thing here though, is that about 75% of the kids here go to Private schools and of those 80% are religious, and of those, 90% are Catholic. I say this because I can't foresee any change regarding religious holidays happening any time soon here.

So to even consider a change here would be dramatic at best. I do believe it should be done in the States but I can see the fight from the religious right already. During the Bush years the religious right was predominant in our culture and I think they are trying to make a comeback. All I can think of is the legal battle about "prayers in schools" to predict how difficult this would become.

That is all for now.

This is an interesting thought for me. Obviously, because I grew up here in the US, there has always been the controversy about separation of church and state. We always said the pledge of allegiance and had breaks based around religious holidays. This was the 70's. It was later that holidays turned into -spring break- and -winter break- although we always knew it was because of Easter or Christmas. I mean, the only other holidays were things like Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc.