TRI In The News

Illinois School Backs Off Promotion of Eastern Mysticism

From OneNewsNow
Original article available here.

Officials at an Illinois high school have agreed to stop organizing and leading students in Buddhist-based chants and meditation exercises during classes.

Doug Mann, the father of a ninth-grader at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, contacted The Rutherford Institute after his daughter was asked to participate in the ritual as part of the honors English curriculum.

"The exercises were connected to the study of the transcendental movement and its literature; the teacher asked the kids to assume a lotus position, to do meditative chants, lay on their backs with their palms to the floor in order to 'become one with the earth,'" explains John Whitehead, president of the Institute. "The father is a Christian, it really concerned him; he knows this is Eastern religion."

Whitehead says his firm contacted school officials and explained their actions were in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The school has since decided to stop doing the exercises. The attorney says schools cannot indoctrinate kids in religion.

"You would hear a lot of screaming and yelling from a lot of groups if a teacher was to say 'Everybody [bow] their heads at their desk and let's say The Lord's Prayer,'" he suggests. "They would go crazy. So if you can't do that, obviously you can't do a Hindu or Buddhist mediation at school."

Whitehead tells OneNewsNow that one federal court has already held that transcendental meditation violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.