CHRISTIANS BEING LEFT OUT AT SCHOOL.

Byline: Christina Wilson

AS a public school teacher at the elementary level, I have followed with interest the recent court proceedings surrounding the Dover, Pa., intelligent design debate and the also-thwarted attempt in Lebec, Calif., to include intelligent design in its school curriculum as a short-term, elective class.

America's public schools have always been a testing ground for many of the major issues that torment society. This is due both to the public nature of our school system and to the inevitable multiculturalism that results from that public nature.

How does the debate over evolution and intelligent design affect me and my second-grade students on a daily level? At the outset, let me say that I am a Christian who believes in the biblical creator God. I chose to teach at the second-grade level specifically so that I would not be required to teach evolution, since that topic does not readily come up in second grade. I have never taught any of my Christian beliefs to my students, but I always feel as though I am withholding a large part of who I am from them.

In an era when there is a large push to encourage some subgroups to come out of their closets, there seems to be in public-school classrooms an equally large push to drive Christian students into one. Christian children are required to leave large portions of their inner selves and their home lives outside the classroom door.

For example, I teach English language development for second-language learners from a state adopted textbook series called Avenues, published by Hampton-Brown. Unit Four is a multicultural social-studies unit titled, ``Celebrate!'' It opens with a big-book selection, ``Day of the Dead,'' a charmingly illustrated story about a holiday celebrated in Mexico. The student book continues with an excellently written piece called, ``This Next New Year,'' about a Chinese-American boy's hopes that his family's New Year's celebration will bring him the luck he needs to turn his life around. It brings tears to my eyes when I read it each year with my class.

After that is a poem about the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashana, another poem about Kwanzaa and a third poem titled, ``Mawlid Al-Nabi'' by Karam Sperling. This poem ends with the lines, ``We sing the praises of the Prophet Muhammad because it's his birthday.'' The unit ends with a poem and a story about July 4 and the Declaration of Independence.

That is all. Now, most of my students are either Catholic or evangelical. Where are their Christian beliefs and experiences reflected in this unit? I couldn't find them. Being ignored by a wall of silence is a form of discrimination.

What does this have to do with intelligent design?

I won't address whether or not I.D. belongs in a science classroom (although I believe it does have a place there), but I do feel that there is plenty of room to teach it in a social studies or philosophy setting. The great value of teaching I.D. would be to leave a public door of discussion open for those hundreds of thousands of American students who believe in God. It would encourage students to compare data and conclusions drawn from those data, to apply logic to their consideration of data, to think for themselves and to formulate their thinking into words that could effectively communicate with others. The teaching of intelligent design in American classrooms would encourage discussion, debate, open-mindedness and cultural tolerance for others.

Isn't this traditionally what American public education has always been about?

Christina Wilson teaches second grade in Fillmore.