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I like Europe. That's a massive understatement, as my family and readers of this blog know. I love its historical connections and its geography. I love its linguistic diversity and wish Americans weren't so stubbornly mono-lingual. I love the more relaxed feeling you find in so many places. When breakfasting with a friend in Germany, for example, the waiters took what felt like an eternity to an American to bring the tab. The atmosphere welcomed a long and leisurely meal with time for eating comfortably and then moving on to a good, long discussion. In America, at the same level of restaurant, we would barely have had time to get into the preliminaries of a conversation matching the one we had that morning before The Ever-Watching Waiter would show up with our tab and a suggestion for more things to order.
In France we found ourselves at a small village around lunchtime. We wanted to buy eatables at the grocery store, but it was closed... for lunch. So was everything else except for one small chocolate/sandwich shop. And even there, only one employee was on staff while the other was at lunch. A long, leisurely lunch.
Mmm... I'm waxing more rhapsodic than I intended. And while I know I only saw a tiny (and mostly rural) part of Europe, I absolutely fell in love with it.
But.
One thing that I hear a lot is how Europeans are more tolerant than Americans. Mostly I get this in class lectures... Americans are so narrow-minded... we should learn more from tolerant Europeans - and on and on this mantra goes.
It's hard to swallow this story whole, though, when I read cases like this one, where a German court has ruled that a Muslim girl cannot be exempt from co-ed swimming lessons because, from their view, "the state's responsibility to educate the girl outweighed an infringement on her religious freedom." That's pretty intolerant. So is Germany's general position on homeschooling, something outside my professors' radars when they talk cheerfully about how much more accepting the culture is over there.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Some tolerance.
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10 comments:
Great site..
I work for Sen. Cornyn and would enjoy talking via e-mail when you get a chance.
My e-mails vincent@johncornyn.com
thanks!
What a great post, Headgirl! :)
I have wanted to tour Europe for some time. It may or may not happen, either way I am fine.
No, I don't think they are more tolerate. They have some issues that appear at the onset to be, but when you look deeper, they're just as "intolerant" as Americans are... as if tolerance to bad things was a good thing. LOL
When I visited Europe, I found that they practically encourage long meal times. Plenty of time to enjoy your wine, dinner, companions, and dessert. I really liked that about Europe and really dislike the rush American restaurants push.
The position on hijabs in France seems pretty intolerant as well.
I've heard horror stories of German homeschoolers over the years (mainly military families, whom you would think would be under USA rules rather than Germany).
As far as England, the elder two Clarkson kids (young adults)stayed with my daughter's family a couple weeks ago (Sally and I are e-mail friends, hoping to connect in real life someday).
They were talking about how extremely liberal (aka: tolerant) L'Abri England is now. Entirely different then what Schaeffer taught.
"The position on hijabs in France seems pretty intolerant as well."
You're right, but on the other hand, their cultural survival and freedom of their children and grandchildren is at stake, so they should be making plans to engage Islam ideologically, demographically (especially improving Europe's own native birth rates), through stricter immigration policy, cracking down on criminal threats and other dangerous illegal activity, and militarily including, in the case of Britain and France, maintaining robust second-strike nuclear deterrents.
That said, I believe Muslim women should be free to wear the veil in most circumstances (on the street, yes — when stopped by a police officer or voting and asked to provide ID, no).
As far as the swimming situation, my feelings are mixed. I think the young woman has certain rights regarding her religion, but the state has a responsibility to educate. Freedom of belief does not equal unlimited freedom to practice, as the U.S. Supreme Court itself has ruled.
Could a Christian fundamentalist parent whose son is in a public school just say, "I don't want my son to learn any of the cosmology, modern law, most biology, chemistry, any evolution theory, etc., etc. because that's not what the Bible says."
It defeats education of students can just pick and choose what they want to learn. Physical education, included swimming (great for health, sometimes essential for survival), is quite rightly considered part of the German curriculum.
Note it's not a Muslim boy who they're saying can't be taught by the school to swim. Out of religious sensibility, the government of Germany is just supposed to leave female German citizens in its schools less healthy (like Saudi females are), less well educated, and at greater danger of death due to their ignorance of this important life skill? But, they're supposed to educate male Muslim students in it?
That seems a bit sexist to me. Just because Islam is sexist, that doesn't mean Germany necessarily has to go along with it. Now I don't think they have any kind of home-schooling alternative, which is unfortunate, so that's the other side of the coin.
So, as I said, my feelings are mixed, but I don't think the German court's decision was without merit.
Europe more tolorant? I'm not sure. I do know that my dad has gotten flack for merely being American during his business trips to both London and Paris. He was in London during the election in November 2007 and some random British guy at the convention got all huffy with Dad at the idea that not everyone in the US was thrilled with the outcome. :-P And proceeded to tell Dad how Americans should vote. Yeah, sure...
That being said, I absolutely love Europe. I spent a week in England two years ago and would thrilled to the bone if I could go again. The history, the culture, ack, so much about it all!
LOL, sorry, but unless you live in Venice, I don't think swimming is something the schools MUST provide for a well-rounded education. :-)
As far as the swimming situation, my feelings are mixed. I think the young woman has certain rights regarding her religion, but the state has a responsibility to educate. Freedom of belief does not equal unlimited freedom to practice, as the U.S. Supreme Court itself has ruled.
Learning science does not sexually shame someone and force them to expose their body. If the school requires her to learn how to swim then they should ask her parents to provide an alternative way of her learning to swim and let her skip the lessons.
"Learning science does not sexually shame someone"
No, but religion does.
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