Learning, not litigating

There has been a whole hornet’s nest of concern stirred up because of an ill considered op-ed piece back in the fall about a particular charter school in Inver Grove Heights. It’s a school that seeks to be inclusive in a way that does not water down difference, and it reaches out to a largely Muslim group of immigrants. Joe Nathan (an internationally respected public school administrator, and currently director of the Center for School Change at the Humphrey Institute), has written an eloquent defense of the school that is worth reading and sharing.

One of the things that fascinates me about the whole "church/state" debate in the US is how it has been interpreted to remove almost any engagement with religion in public schools. Yet polls continue to point to the vast majority of Americans holding religious views. It strikes me as very important that we begin to find ways to learn with and about each other without bracketing as unmentionable this element of our lives. The TIZA School apparently is finding some ways to do that, and the rest of us ought to be paying close attention, not simply trying to stop its experiments.