December holidays and school

How can educators ensure they are not overstepping their First Amendment bounds in addressing religious holidays? Haynes offers a simple suggestion: Plan each activity only after answering the question, "What is our educational purpose?"

If a lesson, or an assembly (as is often the case around the winter holidays), has a good educational purpose, it is on the right track. But as the First Amendment Center's Religious Holidays in the Public Schools points out, "teachers [and other educators] must be alert to the distinction between teaching about religious holidays, which is permissible, and celebrating religious holidays, which is not." (Anne OBrien at Edutopia)