THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Santa fired from Victorian pre-school so not to offend religious groups

Santa fired from Victorian pre-school so not to offend religious groups

Montessori schools are pretty wacky anyway so maybe we should not be surprised

THERE'S no holly in the halls, and Santa has been sacked. Christmas is out at a Victorian kindergarten, which is tiptoeing around any mention of the religious holiday.

Santa and his sleigh don't get a look in at Montessori Marvels Preschool in Greenvale which is striving to be everything to everybody. Children celebrate with an end-of-year party rather than a Christmas party and will part for the holidays wishing each other "Happy New Year".

Premier Ted Baillieu has warned Victorians not to let political correctness ruin Christmas with some schools and community groups imposing yuletide bans in recent years.

But the centre is not budging, saying it is abiding by Montessori's philosophy to be inclusive of all religious and cultural groups. "We are just trying to take an open approach to the holiday season," said spokeswoman Marlene Guclu, herself a Christian. "We run a non-denominational, non-religious program."

One parent is upset by what she said was effectively a Christmas ban. The woman, called Anna, rang up radio station 3AW to complain about a kinder in Greenvale, which she did not name. "My son is getting really frustrated because I'm singing one song, and he's singing the other," she said. "They sing carols but they change the words. "It doesn't have to be about religion."

But Ms Guclu said Christmas could still be discussed one on one with children. "We want all families to feel welcome, of all nationalities," she said.

Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria chairman Sam Afra said it could be a positive move if they were seeking to include all faiths in celebrating the festive season.

"If they are trying to do the right thing for everyone, we don't want to take that out of context," he said. "Different people coming around the table now saying maybe we should look at interfaith. I would like to encourage more debate, and to be more mature about our debate, where we are more understanding and respect each other."

SOURCE

2 comments:

arDecember 9, 2010 at 2:19 PM
Santa doesn't seem to be banned from the Montessori school my boy is going to...

The Christmas concert is next week. It will be interesting to see how it goes given there are a lot of ethnic kids in the school. I'll let you know how badly offended everyone is!
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AnonymousSeptember 24, 2011 at 6:46 PM
Sadly our School district here in Scappoose, Oregon just "fired" Santa! However I wish they only fired him for religious purposes, but they fired him stating that Santa is out of shape and is a bad example to our youth! We as a community are outraged!
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The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

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