Intimidation

Florida is sponsoring a contest where kids who read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It's a tie-in to the new movie. However,

An advocacy group claims a Florida reading contest involving the classic novel and upcoming film "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" violates the role of religion in the classroom.

Attorneys for The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), however, say they will support in court any school threatened by the claim free of charge.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AUSCS) group has demanded Gov.
Jeb Bush's statewide contest stop using C.S. Lewis' Christian allegory as the only book for the contest.

Schools across this country are cowed by the threat of lawsuits from groups like the ACLU and the AUSCS, and that intimidation has leveraged the influence of these groups to a far greater degree than most of us realize. We have this strange new disease, where nobody wants to mention Christmas, the Ten Commandments, but somehow the Koran is fine. Schools are caught between parents agree over what they see as assaults on their faith in the curriculum, while others with the backing of liberal advocacy groups want to teach children about sex, including homosexuality, and the recent questionaire decision in the Ninth Circuit holding that "Parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students."

Well, that ought to shut the troublemakers up. But it won't. The schools are stuck in the middle trying to satisfy those who want them to shape society and those who want them to teach basic skills and leave the parenting to parents. I suspect that they will tend to lean in the direction the best funded lawsuits are aimed.