Democracy at work

Children and religion. Following on from the post below, it seems that not only the Dalai Lama doesn’t get it. A scientific high school in Cesena, in Emilia Romagna, has suspended one of its maths teachers for two months without pay. Why? Because he distributed a questionnaire to 70 of his students asking them which they’d prefer to study: catholicism, the history of religions, or human rights. Most of the kids chose human rights (65%), followed by history of religions (24%). That left a mere 11% into catholicism. This didn’t go down at all well with the local scholastic authorities, who demanded a six-month suspension of the offending teacher, Alberto Marani, a period that was subsequently reduced to two. The full story, for Italian readers, can be found here. Among the readers’ comments is one from an ex-student who claims that the school is effectively run by Opus Dei, which makes Marani’s act not just culturally relevant but also a gesture of reckless, exemplary folly. All power to him.