I went to junior high in Orem for a while and was shocked by how diffferent it was from the public school I went to on the east coast. They seemed to treat everyone like they were supposed to live like Mormons, even though the school is not supposed to be Mormon. They even snuck in seminary by putting it in a non-public building conveniently located right next to the public school. I could be wrong, but I think they even let you go to seminary DURING the school day as one of your class periods.

Those of you living in Mormon towns in Utah, were your experiences of public school similiar? I was a devout believer as a kid, but being there was a total shock. It felt like they were violating the seperation of church and state, which I had been taught to revere.

Never Mo here.

I graduated a long time ago but yes, seminary was built into the class schedule.

I "took" seminary in Jr. High and took delight in asking irreverently innocent questions and reading provocative bible verses when it was my turn to choose the day's scripture.

In High School, I didn't take seminary and was forced to take an early morning class in order to have enough credits to graduate. I'm not too sure this many years later but I believe students got HS credit for seminary.

Every school and probably colleges too, was built in conjunction with the Church's simultaneous purchase of adjoining land on which to build seminary buildings.

UEA (Utah Ed. Assn.) conference was planned to coincide with LDS General Conf. so people could travel to SLC for both.

There was release time from school for all kinds of Church activities such as the Road Shows.

A Mormon FB friend recently lamented that public schools were accommodating Muslims for their obligatory prayers. The nerve! I could hardly contain myself ranting about "accommodation" made to the Church.

Release time seminary in high school does not count to the High school diploma. I ended up having to do packets to make up for the credits I was behind because of the holes in my schedule.

The CES does have a separate seminary graduation and institute graduation(college).

If we could make an ex-mormon education system we could create a release time for ex-mormon students. :)
"Finally, school districts must provide released time for students wishing to participate in religious instruction other than seminary."

http://www.acluutah.org/resources/item/593-lds-seminary-in-public-schools

While there are some instances and exceptions of teachers going overboard, my public education experience in Orem(MVHS) was secular. There were enough non LDS people in the faculty to call out the crap that the Mormon staff would try and pull.

I have nothing but pity for anyone in Orem who is not in the EVIL CULT.

DID they try and pull anything?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/08/2016 06:08PM by abcdomg.

abcdomg Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> DID they try and pull anything?


I am pretty sure we all know the cult enough to know the answer. Of course they did.

There was always that one kid that had to get up before an event and suggest a prayer or pray. But the teacher or administrators couldn't suggest it. There was always a holier than thou that would take over in that regard.

Moved to Utah from "back East" in 10th grade. Even though I was a life long TBM kid it was still huge culture shock.

I had never before seen an opening prayer before a pep rally.

I had never before seen an opening prayer before a school convocation.

The concept of release time to accommodate seminary was totally alien to me. My first year of seminary was home study with a Sunday morning hour long class period.

Even as a stupid 10th grader (and I was pretty stupid) the whole set up screamed of blurring the lines of church and state. That its gone on this long without being challenged is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Utah public schools are mormon church-lite. Plus,they rate pretty crappy on every measurement of school systems. I've been spending 7-9K a year, for 11 years to put my kid in private schools. Even mormons, that move here from other states, put their kids in private school. My kid's Catholic school is 50% non-Catholic & about 15% LDS kids.

When we lived in Utah for a while, I commented to my son that I was surprised the Mormons didn't run parochial schools. His reply "why would they when the state does it for them".

They did try to run a couple; but during correlation they got rid of a lot of things... parochial schools, Primary Children's Hospital, YDE, Ward Basketball/Softball, Roadshows, Art/Talent shows, etc... I don't even know if they still do ward BBQs or Picnics.

article from Desert News wondering the same thing.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/565035550/So-few-LDS-schools.html?pg=all



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2016 12:54AM by dydimus.

I work for a school district in Salt Lake. I have an elementary-aged daughter and I pay a lot for her to attend a private school because I know that the schools here suck.

Since I'm in IT I regularly help teachers with their computers. It makes me want to gag when they put a family picture in front of the temple as their desktop image. And I find a lot of non-work-related files on their systems, too. Like "Young Women's" and "Testimony," etc. Plus things like their kid's mission pics.

Ugh.

I recall (bad-memory-warning) that the concept of release time for seminary classes in Utah was borrowed from Catholics and some Protestant groups on the East Coast, who provided religious instruction during the school day. Several court cases helped shape the legal strategy used by those religious groups, and later by the Mormons. (Prior to religious release time in Utah the church sponsored academies that were private schools with religious instruction.)

Some Catholic and Protestant students were legally "released" to attend religious classes off of public school grounds for one period during the school day.

Mormons in Utah and S. Idaho took liberties with the precedent set by the courts that allowed religious instruction during the school day, and went so far as to offer attendees credit toward high school graduation. That was abolished. (I'm too lazy to look up when that occurred. But I think it was in the 1970s or 1980s.)

See Zorach vs. Clauson and McCollum vs. Board of Education; both are US Supreme Court decisions articulating what is, and what's not, Constitutional concerning release-time religious education. The Boner.

Years ago (1967) I knew a girl who went to a public school in South Louisiana. There the students had daily on-campus instruction in Catholic catechism. She said the worst part was that the FIVE non-Catholic students had to spend the hour in the principal's office doing homework.

Of course, in my high school in Baptist country the sporting events were preceded by clearly Christian (only) prayers.

"Mormons in Utah and S. Idaho took liberties with the precedent set by the courts that allowed religious instruction during the school day, and went so far as to offer attendees credit toward high school graduation. "

EVERY High school in Utah has a ward house right next door. Mormon kids are released at 1 pm to walk next door to seminary. The non-mormon, unworthy-left over kids get to go to study hall. Talk about a glaring lesson in exclusion.

StillAnon:
You are so right. In certain cases, non Mormon students attended RT seminary just to be with their Mormon friends.

Keep in mind that RT seminary is offered in Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Idaho (even North Idaho where Mormons are a tiny minority - Coeur d'Alene), etc. In those cases, Mormons are "excluded" in a sense, because in most of those high schools (I taught at several RT programs in AZ and Washington), Mormons cannot accumulate enough credits to graduate from high school without attending summer school, or some kind of online high school program to make up for the credits they lose, by leaving school grounds for one period a day to take seminary.

I wonder how long parents who want their kids to prepare for post high school education are going to keep letting their kids be "released" to attend religion classes at an adjacent LDS property.

"I wonder how long parents who want their kids to prepare for post high school education are going to keep letting their kids be "released" to attend religion classes at an adjacent LDS property."

In Utah? Parents would rather have their kids be short on real world credits than be embarrassed by having their kids skip seminary. It's almost a form of child abuse.

I was a music major at the U of U, NOT BYU! Before a concert, they had a CULT prayer for the musicians. Several of us left the room. The U of U is a state owned school unlike BYU. They had no right to impose the FU*KED prayer on those of us who were not in the CULT!

From 5th to 12th grade I went to Utah County schools (American Fork, Highland, Pleasant Grove, Provo). In retrospect, my entire public education in Utah was was like one extended Especially For Youth session.

I seem to remember from my graduate studies in education that release time seminary is in fact perfectly legal as long as the classes are held off campus and there is no further entanglement between the church and the school (i.e. no high school credit is given.)

It is not unusual for high school students to leave campus for a number of reasons. Some are learning trades, and some are taking college classes. Some take classes at more than one high school.

My high school had a concept called "open campus." Students were free to leave campus during study halls or lunch without signing out. They could go home for lunch, or to the town center to shop or for a snack. I never took advantage of it, but many did.

What the heck : )
I am so glad that I never had to go through that crap. How is this allowed?
I guess it is allowed like polygamy still being practiced in Utah.

I taught for a brief time at a school in Utah County. Every faculty meeting started and ended with prayer.

This year in my child's elementary school class, the teacher went around the room and had each child tell what their favorite part of General Conference was.

The high school choir sang a couple of hymns at my child's high school graduation a few years ago.

Ugh, are you serious?! Utah County right? But for real?? I know my daughter, almost in 2nd, will soon know a lot about the church from school and her friends, unfortunately.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2016 12:45AM by hausfrau.

When I went to school, seminary was built right into the curriculum. We had 7 periods a day and one of them was seminary. It was just that way and nobody said anything different. I didn't have a choice and I didn't know any better.

At the end of the 12 years there was a separate seminary graduation ceremony just like school graduation.

In a Las Vegas public Magnet High School located near the most lds part of town, one of the classrooms had a long open shelf full of Book of Mormons and one lone Bible.

Now how should that be possible?

Also, at our small high school, in the first days after 9-11, the Principal (lds), gave lds boys, and only lds boys, permission to leave school to attend some ceremonies at the lds church--across the street. No other religious (or non-religious) groups were given similar permission.

This ended wnen of the faculty called him on it and threatened to go to the newspapers and television stations if it didn't stop immediately.

I only attended kindergarten and 1st grade in Utah schools (Mill Creek Elementary).
And it was a long time ago (1965-66).

As I recall, it was essentially Primary, but in a different building. With just a little bit more reading and basic math, but just as much mormon religious instruction.

Things have changed a bit since then, but not completely...:(

We blessed our snacks in kindergarten

Had class prayer through 3rd grade

This was mid 60s.

"We blessed our snacks in kindergarten." That is sweet but hilarious!

I grew up and went to school in SE Idaho, which is of course much like Utah.

There was a lot of pressure to take release time seminary which I never did.

I do not recall any teachers crossing the line and preaching or proselyting.

There were some ridiculous "moral" and cultural moments. A few that I recall:

One year the high school musical was Rogers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella." The drama teacher edited it for content.

At graduation, my class voted to play "We are the Champions." This was forbidden because Queen is "gay".

I overheard a student literally crying to a teacher (outside of class) that she was being forced to learn about evolution. The teacher told her just to endure it and remember that she knew the truth. I found this particularly odd because our science classes did not deny evolution, but we didn't spend a lot of time on it.

The "virgin lips club" was large and promoted by students who were considered popular.

I was showing a friend a picture of myself that had a bare shoulder. A boy looked at it (uninvited) and told me it was pornographic. (He, ironically, ended up getting arrested for some kind of sex crime."

There was a lot of hooplah if a teacher wanted to show an R or PG-13 rated film in a class.

"Controversial" books were always offered with an alternative assignment.

I went 4th thru 8th grade at a school in a small town in Northern Utah (rhymes with Coalville!)

My family was Catholic, moved to UT from WYO.

In grade school, we rode the bus to school. On Tuesdays, the last stop for the bus was at the local chapel. All the kids got off for primary except my sister and I. The driver was quite put out that he had to take us another 4-5 miles to our stop.

A few years later, the first day of 7th grade, 7th period. My Catholic friend and I were wandering the halls when we were caught by the principal. He wanted to know why we weren't in Seminary. That was the only class for 7th grade that period.

Fun times :-).

I attended RT seminary in Arizona. The class was listed on my school schedule and the grade, as I recall, was added to my grade report. They just considered it another "elective" instead of woodshop or drafting, I guess.

It was funny, my non-mormon friends would get caught during regular school hours walking off campus by a monitor and just respond, "we're headed to seminary" and it was like a free pass, lol. No further questions.

Ah Yes! Released Time. A legality invented so they can teach a religious doctrine during school hours at a public funded State school system. The other requirement was the Seminary building cannot be “on” school property, so it is conveniently located directly across the street.

I’m a 1971 graduate of Ogden High School, Ogden UT. Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was mandatory and required curriculum for all Sophmore males. (One class period a day, mandatory Army Uniform on Wednesdays---Yes, it is True).

During my Junior year I was forced into either a second year of ROTC or a Seminary class for the last period of the day in order to get the electives I wanted. I opted for “Released Time” (Seminary), and never went. I just left school early everyday---for a year. Towards the end of the year I was called into the counselor’s office—they finally realized I was not “attending” school during the last period of the day. It was mainly poor coordination between the Seminary teacher and the School. She read me the right act, and said I would get an F in the class, how would my parents feel about that, and my Bishop, etc. etc. I told her I’m really not a Mormon, nor are my parents, nor would they care, nor do I even live with them. Plus it was “Released Time”, so it really didn’t count against graduation requirements anyway. After some feeble attempts to contact my parents, and being only a few days until the end of the school year, they whole thing just sort of went away.

Some of us lived a very colorful life, and the Utah Mormon culture of one size fits all wasn’t included in mine.

I went to private Lutheran and Episcopalian schools; some in Utah, some not. As such, I didn't experience a lot of the behavior described here.

However, one year in high school we were playing Lehi in soccer. Bunch of Mormon kids raised in what was then a very rural community. Something tells me they didn't get much exposure to different belief systems, because knowing we were from an Episcopalian school, they constantly called us - and I'm not making this up - "Catholic Jews" and told us they didn't want us on their field.

We were too dumbstruck to formulate a cogent response. Never mind that almost none of us were actually Episcopalian. Our matriculation in an affiliated institution was all the proof they needed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2016 12:42AM by mredwasatapir.

When I was a kid we got credit for seminary, at least NT and OT, and had prayers in assemblies, but otherwise not much religion. There were 7 non Mormon churches and even a couple of Jewish and Buddhist families in our small town. There would have been a lot of protest if religion had been pushed. It was probably different in towns of equal size where everyone was Mormon.

I taught in the largest Utah school district for years and other than graduation prayers during the first few years,I really saw little religion although I suppose some teachers may have pushed it. The dress code was similar to LDS standards which may or may not have been deliberate. Of course we would rather kids drop out than allow them to smoke which is kind of stupid.That was the law though so the district didnt get a vote. I had a couple of Catholic girls tell me that a Mormon teacher criticized them for wearing crosses.If true, that was out of line. I never heard his side of the story, but he was pretty conservative and self righteous.It certainly would have been in character.However, the girls were the sort who were not above stretching the truth. So who knows?

Let me add that in all the schools where I taught, there were many non Mormon teachers and at least a few no Mo administrators. That helped a lot.

I'm in regular contact (part of my "Exmo Senior Mission") with an old friend who's a former bishop, a working scientist, and really a good guy. I did have to ignore a recent e-mail he sent praising Russell M. Nelson, however. :-)

We were both victims of a horrible high school biology teacher; my buddy has nothing good to say about him, either, and my solution was to head over to the humanities. I did have a terrific social studies teacher who was very LDS, but another genuine good guy and fairly liberal back then. Alas, he moved to Happy Valley and has been assimilated. I credit literature and creative writing with saving my sanity and--eventually--freeing from the dogmatic black-and-white thinking of the LDS mindset.

Another teacher in junior high was in charge of the gifted students' program and taught geometry. At least he called it that. It turned out he was an apostle in the Allred polygamy group (The Church of the Apostolic Brethren), and ultimately he abandoned a number of wives and children and left for Hawaii. He finally wound up in New Zealand sporting a bunch of "titles" which were absolutely phony and used to promote his latest scams, which included "Body Electronics."

Google "John Whitman Ray," if you're interested, and be sure to read the comments of a former RFM regular who posted the story here. That one is butt ugly...

My experience since with student teaching and kids in the schools leads me to believe it's mostly gotten worse, although there are some "genuine heroes" out there.

BTW, I was not a church member at any time, and I think I benefitted by getting a more rounded education in science, math, and history as a result. Seminary was brain chloroform, seriously.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2016 01:14AM by SL Cabbie.

I worked as a high school administrator in Alpine School District in the mid-90s. The community the school served was over 90 percent Mormon. The principal I worked with (non-LDS) made sure that the school followed the regulations about music chosen for school concerts and about prayer at the school graduation. (There were, even in Alpine School District, policies about having no religious music at concerts and having no school-sanctioned prayers back then, but I am not sure if all schools followed them as closely as this high school did during this principal's tenure.) So, when I later moved to a mostly unchurched region of New England and heard religious music at a Christmas concert, I was surprised. I also heard a lot more praying at the graduation events. Never once did anyone complain during the 10+ years I worked in this New England community about the religious music or about the praying. It seemed to me that in the absence of a dominant and pushy religious group, people were a lot more accepting of the various expressions of religious belief that took place at these events.