Church, state, free speech and that kid's Jesus poster.

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In Mo's art literacy class last week they were making collages. One kid cut out the letters J E S U S and incorporated them prominently in his collage. The collages were then hung in the public school hallway.

The kid's mom is a friend of mine and she was kind of "Oh crap. What is gonna happen? Will they leave it up? Will they take it down? Too funny."

So before I go to school this week and start looking for it I was wondering:

If it were up to you to decide would the picture stay or go? Why?

I should mention that this artwork was created by a six year old kindergartener.

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stay

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I think it should stay too. I think that my decision is swayed by the fact that I know this kid and his family though. If I was just wandering through the school and saw it I might feel that it is inappropriate.

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Stay.

I'm pretty big on keeping religion out of schools, but mostly in a top-down, indoctrinating way. If it was the kid's own idea, and it's so patently harmless, I don't have a problem with it.

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I think if I went to a school and I saw 40 or 50 or 100 Jesuses on the wall, I'd be curious about what was going on.

If it's 1 or 10 Jesus(es) on the wall among 20 or 50 or 100 pieces of kids' art, I'd go with it.

Religion is part of the communities most of us live in. I think it'd be odd if there was no hint of it in childrens' art.

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Stay.

Why? Mostly it's a gut-reaction. And I am definitely anti-religion in school. But, he's 6. He's creative. He had something to say. It's art. All those combined make me think it should stay.

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Stay. Why in heavens name not? Teachers or school directors talking about God is one thing, but kids should be free to express themselves however. Whom would it harm, that a kid draws a picture with Jesus?

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censorship in any form is not acceptable to people with intelligence, even if he is a kindergartner.

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Now I'll be doubly interested to see if the poster is still there!

I imagine people at this school will be really tolerant of Christian symbols but I do find myself wondering what might happen if he had represented some other ideology.

Like, for instance, what if he had made this:

http://z.about.com/d/hinduism/1/0/S/1/swastika.jpg

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I'd suspect he'd been reading a Norwegian knitting pattern book.

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Ha!

I chose that symbol because there are severl Hindu children in his class who might want to use it. Most people don't associate a swastika as a Hindu symbol meaning "may good prevail".

I can easily imagine people seeing the symbol in a school hallway and going into fits.

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Stay.

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Stay. And, haha.

For some reason it made me think of the last Christmas pageant of my little buddy (now 9) . The backdrop had such a multitude of symbols - it really did look like a giant collage.

I guess the kids got to take part in how it was decorated, and they each put their photo wherever they pleased.

It was very cool to see that the kids didn't necessarily paste themselves near their affiliated religious symbols - more like grouped themselves with their friends. Smile

Anyways, that's a bit of a tangeant, but I think a collage for art with Jesus on it is harmless.

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Church, state, free speech and that kid's Jesus poster.

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