🚨 “BACK IN THE 80s, WE WERE TAUGHT NOT TO TAKE CANDY FROM STRANGERS IN VANS.”
One of our members said this after seeing LifeWise Academy advertise what it had waiting for middle school students:
Takis. Nerds Gummy Clusters. Italian ice. Coffee…👀
Cute, right?
Except these aren’t treats being handed out at an after-school church event.
👉These are incentives attached to religious instruction that children leave their PUBLIC SCHOOL to attend DURING THE SCHOOL DAY.
And we are so damn tired of being told that none of this matters because participation is “voluntary.”
THEY ARE CHILDREN.
Put yourself in the shoes of an 11-year-old who doesn’t go. Your friends get up and leave together. You stay.
They get the special trip.
The snacks.
The candy.
The prizes.
The parties.
The fun.
Then they come back to school and tell you all about it. And next week, you watch them leave all over again. What exactly do adults think that feels like to a child?
And then there’s the part that makes us genuinely angry:
FOOD INSECURITY. 😡
Some children in our public schools are hungry.
We are NOT claiming any child pictured here is food insecure. We don’t know that…
And neither does LifeWise. They don’t know which kid looking at those treats is going home to a full pantry either. 😔
For some children, Takis and Italian ice are just fun. Nerd clusters are available and attainable.
For another child, being offered food can carry a hell of a lot more weight.
Some kids want the food.
Some want their friends.
Some kids want the cool prizes.
Some don’t want to be left behind.
Some desperately want to belong.
And adults know this.
That’s WHY adults give children incentives.
Yet the moment those incentives are attached to religious instruction, we’re expected to pretend they magically stop influencing behavior. 💁♀️
Meanwhile, LifeWise says these students are discussing:
“What is the Bible, and can we trust it?”
So call this what it is.
🚨🚨Religious instruction, during the public-school day, accompanied by things children want.
LifeWise has every right to teach its religion.
What we reject is the ridiculous insistence that because a parent signed a permission form, everything surrounding that child’s “choice” suddenly becomes neutral.
It isn’t.
And the children who stay behind matter too.
Their school day shouldn’t be designed to make them feel like saying no to religion means saying no to the fun, the treats, their friends — or food.
What people are saying:
- Facebook User: You are equating a pedo enticing children with candy to a program that a parent has to sign them up for? That is DESPERATE and DESPICABLE.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User We didn’t equate shit. We pointed out that enticing children with candy, prizes and rewards is a tactic adults use because it works on children.
And “their parents signed them up” doesn’t change that.
LifeWise is the adult organization here. These are elementary school children. When participation comes with candy, prizes, parties and stuffed animals, of course that can influence kids — including the kids watching their classmates leave and come back with things they didn’t get.
If your defense requires pretending we made a comparison we never made instead of addressing the actual practice, maybe ask yourself why. WWJD?
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User We didn’t equate shit. We pointed out that enticing children with candy, prizes and rewards is a tactic adults use because it works on children.
- Facebook User: christian missionaries used the same bribery…if you join us will help or now that we’ve fed you join us or you get no more .
- Facebook User: What god? All praise Viracocha! I’m sure the young ones would take time out of class for Pastafarian beer volcanos and strippers.
- Facebook User: How very many decisions about children are in the hands of the schools already? THIS CHOICE is VOLUNTARY… how many times does any parent get to CHOOSE what the school is doing with their child during the school day? And LIFEWISE is an excellent choice.
- Facebook User: Facebook User uhm…what decisions? Religious fantasy does not belong being pushed on kids at school. But i guess thats what yall do..groom ans indoctrinate kids..funny how yall think queers are grooming kids. Bahahahah
- Facebook User: Facebook User you can choose to have your child go to a religious school if that’s important to you. You should not be able to make a choice that negatively impacts the overall learning environment and is harmful to other students.
- Facebook User: Facebook User “what decisions” you ask? Only EVERYTHING about what happens from arrival at school until dismissal.
- Facebook User: Facebook User What choice am *I* making? An old term still applies– “en Loco parentis” (in place of parents). EVERY decision during the school day, all day, every day.
- Facebook User: Facebook User ok great. Theycdont get to make a decision about religion. Never
- Facebook User: Facebook User SCOTUS disagrees sorry.
- Facebook User: Facebook User you spelled that wrong itd actually SCROTUM
- Facebook User: Its INSANE. My kid almost cant go anywhere in town wothout being given tiny jesus and stickers and shit.
- Facebook User: How dare they help with food insecurity. How dare missionaries bring medical help.
You people are ridiculous.
- Facebook User: Facebook User they caused the food insecurity and medical issues that Native peoples suffered by killing the food and medicine sources, stealing the land in their extermination attempts on non-christian Natives. They used their christian Doctrine of Discovery to try to eradicate Native peoples then the missionaries come under the guise of kindness offering food and medical care to the desperation they caused but only to force christianity to the desperate.
- Facebook User: Facebook User learn history
- Facebook User: Facebook User Cool, so you only believe the new revionist history.
Read about Jim Elliot and his friends, who were all killed by natives before their wives were able to reach the natives. Read about Mueller and so many others who were the only hope that orphans could look to. Look at almost every major hospital and the start of the nursing profession.
The secular additions to “healthcare” are people like Margaret Sangar whose goal it was to bring eugenics to the states and purify our bloodlines by purging the blacks. IE, planned parenthood.
- Facebook User: Facebook User Native people know our history…so cool you only believe the white colonizer side of history.
- Facebook User: Facebook User everywhere those christian missionaries invaded they just couldn’t let Native people live their own ways. https://medium.com/belover/when-evangelicals-were-cannibals-46fa0221ce43
- Facebook User: Facebook User how fucking stupid do you have to be to think that offering kids candy to leave school is a sincere effort to affect food insecurity?
- Facebook User: Facebook User bring food? Uhm…here kids we will give you candy but you have to listen to us talk about jesus..uhm…thats bridery boss
Leave a Reply