The thought occurred to me at work today. Many schools no longer allow students to sing religious Christmas songs at their holiday concerts. This political correctness is getting out of hand. Actually, it's not so much political correctness as it is censorship. It made me wonder how many great works of art would be excluded because of religious subject material. I thought of a few.

--Handel's Messiah is the most obvious.
--Mozart's Requiem
--Schubert's "Ave Maria".


And that's just a few. I wonder what students are losing out on because schools won't teach anything because of Christian subject matter. These are not only religious, but they are also great works of music and should be studied and learned just for that reason. I have felt my spirit rising this week while listening to Messiah in my car. I wonder if that's why our students are falling behind in the U.S. because they can't study anything that might offend someone of a different religion.

As my choral teacher Richard Nickerson would tell us when we learned a piece that was religious, "You don't have to believe it. Just sing it like you mean it." Nobody is forcing their beliefs on anyone, but schools are so afraid of that perception that they'll deprive their students of culture rather than risk offending someone. That is offensive to me. Why  not teach these songs and make sure the students get a well rounded education rather than a wishy washy one in which history is ignored/rewritten and our traditional American culture is degraded?

It seems to me that the schools are trying to suppress the impact that religion, especially Christianity has had on the world.