Reply #15: Actually, [View All]

your grand-daughters teacher has no obligation what so ever to acknowlege Halloween in any way.

Public school is to educate, not celebrate commercial, ethnic, or cultural holidays.

Halloween is a no-win holiday. Those who love Halloween are willing to go to war to make sure that their kid's class "celebrates" Halloween. Several branches of the national christian cult are willing to go to war to keep their kids from celebrating holidays their cult considers "evil" at a public school. No matter what a school or teacher does, there are people who will be disgruntled, at the least, and sometimes angry and aggressive.

I think "h day" rule is stupid, myself. I have never celebrated halloween in my classroom, and I've taken a lot of heat from families who expect parties and costumes. I always tell them that halloween is a family holiday that kids celebrate after school.

There are some whole schools, and classrooms, that celebrate anyway, and tell people who don't like it to stay at home that day. Or they send them to the library to get them out of the way. I think that's a clear violation; you don't deny public school students their instructional time because you want to have a party, and you don't engage in activities in a public school that are not inclusive of all.

My school says no parties, no costumes. We're supposed to be teaching. Our pto has a halloween carnival one day after school the last week of October. Funded by parents, run by volunteers. Not during school hours, or funded with school funds. A local farm has a corn maze and pumpkin picking; lots of kids go on field trips to pick pumpkins, visit farm animals, and negotiate the corn maze during october.

With all of the real issues to take a stand on, I think this one is frivolous and a waste of time. The teacher could be handling it better, but it's not exactly a crisis in public education. We've got multiple crises in education that really need family, and community, time and energy to address.

Why not just turn it into a lesson for your daughter and granddaughter in tolerance, and in following directions, and celebrate the freedom to celebrate halloween after school?