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Credit: Bekir Donmez via Unsplash
Education Dive
School Halloween celebrations continue raising spectre of academic value
Religious and equity issues lead some districts to shun events around
the holiday, but many are offering alternatives so all students can
have fun.
Natalie Gross
Oct. 24, 2019
On Oct. 31, elementary students in Illinois’ North Shore School
District 112 will don costumes for Halloween parades at their schools
after lunch, celebrating the holiday with classmates and family members
who come for a visit.
Their peers in nearby Evanston/Skokie School District 65 will do no such thing.
Earlier this year — in a move that sparked local controversy and
national headlines — the district announced it was banning costumes and
other celebrations of Halloween during school hours.
The differing policies of the two districts, barely 15 miles apart in
the northern Chicago suburbs, highlight two sides of an issue
public-school officials have weighed for decades: how to handle a
holiday as controversial as Halloween.
“This is a story that has a long history,” said Charles Haynes,
founding director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum
Institute in Washington, D.C.
Haynes has advised schools on these types of issues since the
mid-1980s. Back then, most opposition to Halloween celebrations came
from conservative Christian groups, which felt public schools shouldn’t
condone a holiday with pagan roots, especially if schools were pushing
back against celebrations of Christmas, he said.
But he’s watched it evolve into a more nuanced debate in recent years
to include questions of academic value and even equity. “The story
changes as increasing numbers of people raise issues about it for
various reasons,” he said.
Haynes said the religious argument doesn’t hold weight on First
Amendment grounds, since the holiday is considered a secular one in
modern culture. (If students were learning about the origins of
Halloween, however, that would be “treading on thinner ice.”)
But it’s not just some Christians who oppose it: Many Muslims and
Jehovah’s Witnesses also don’t celebrate Halloween and prefer not to
have their children involved in related activities, Haynes said. So in
schools where Halloween creeps into lessons and classroom activities
for weeks leading up to the holiday, there’s a legitimate concern
students whose parents opt them out could be losing out on valuable
learning time.
“If they can’t opt out reasonably, that’s not fair,” Haynes said. “So,
naturally, the question comes up, ‘What is the educational value? And
it’s really hard to defend Halloween on educational grounds.’”
This seemed to be the case in Evanston, Illinois, where school leaders
decided against Halloween celebrations because they don’t align with
the district’s commitment to equity, Assistant Superintendent Andalib
Khelghati said in an emailed statement.
“While we recognize that Halloween is a fun tradition for many, it is
not a holiday that is celebrated by everyone for various reasons and we
want to honor that,” he said. “We are also aware of the range of
inequities that are embedded in Halloween celebrations that take place
as part of the school day and the unintended negative impact that it
can have on some students, families, and staff.”
Khelghati did not respond to a request to elaborate.
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