Minnesota
Related: About this forumMinnesota school district warned to halt school’s ‘field trips’ to Christian church
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/04/minnesota-school-district-warned-to-halt-schools-field-trips-to-christian-church/Minnesota school district warned to halt schools field trips to Christian church
By David Ferguson
Tuesday, February 4, 2014 14:49 EST
A Golden Valley, Minnesota high school has been warned by the American Humanist Association to discontinue its field trips to a local Lutheran church. According to Minneapolis StarTribune.com, lawyers for the group warned the Robbinsdale School District by letter that sending public school students to a church to do charity work for a religious group is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.
On a so-called field trip in 2013, students of Golden Valleys School of Engineering and the Arts assembled food baskets for the Christian charity Feed My Starving Children at Calvary Lutheran Church. The packaged meals were to be sent to Haiti to feed people still struggling after that countrys historic earthquake in 2010.
The family of one student complained to the school district, but the complaint was reportedly ignored.
A statement on the Appigani Humanist Centers website said, A Minnesota public school is being warned by the American Humanist Associations Appignani Humanist Legal Center to stop sending students on unconstitutional field trips to a nearby Christian church to create manna packages for a Christian nonprofit group. The letter was sent today by the Appignani Humanist Legal Center (AHLC) to the administrators of the School of Engineering and Arts in Golden Valley, MN, Principal Kim Hiel and Executive Director of Academics Lori Simon after the AHLC was alerted to the violation by a family enrolled in the suburban Minneapolis school. The letter asserts that the school has quite clearly violated the Establishment Clause by directing students to attend a pervasively Christian, proselytizing environment.
Feral Child
(2,086 posts)sarisataka
(18,883 posts)yes it is being run through a church, but it is providing food to children. Is the cost of separation of church and state children dying from lack of food?
I do not know if there is a secular equivalent they could go to instead
dflprincess
(28,091 posts)the participation really is.
I've been to the Feed My Starving Children warehouse in Eagan with groups from work and they do say a prayer before the work begins. (They usually preface it with "if nobody minds" - though I have yet to see anyone jump up and say "I do."
Despite the prayer, I did not find them to be overly evangelical - in fact while we were filling the food bags they play some pretty good rock and roll from the '60s. I've always been out there with people more my age so I don't know if they gear the music to the age group that's working or not but it really helps make the work fun and the time go by fast.
Randomthought
(837 posts)If this "field trip" was on a day when school was in session then why were these children not in school learning algebra or grammar?
If it was on a weekend then it would have been voluntary I would think. Also don't parents have to sign permission slips for field trips?