p2pnet news | Off Topic:- Halloween is over with people around the world packing their horror gear away for another year —-

—- except in Moscow schools.

They don’t have to bother because they didn’t unpack it in the first place

Education authorities in Moscow banned Halloween festivities in local schools to protect the, “minds and the spiritual and moral health of pupils”.

Calling it the cult of death, the Moscow education department first barred Halloween events in 2003, says Interfax.

The decision was taken because the holiday “includes religious elements, including the cult of death, the mockery of death, personification of death and evil, which contradict the secular nature of state educational institutions,” the story has education department press secretary Alexander Gavrilov stating.

But in the United States, at least one school takes a different view, going in the opposite direction.

Says Associated Press:

“When George Fain visits a grave to mark a pagan holiday, she won’t have to worry about the work she’s missing in her classes at Marshall University.

“That’s because her absence Thursday on the Samhain holiday has been approved by the Huntington school, which for the first time is recognizing pagan students’ desire to be excused from class for religious holidays and festivals.

“The university with an enrollment of about 14,000 may be the only school in the country to formally protect pagan students from being penalized for missing work that falls on religious holidays, although others have catchall policies they say protect students of every religious faith.”

(The witch is from Joan Stark’s gallery of original ASCII art.)

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Interfax – Halloween banned at Moscow schools, October 31, 2007
Associated Press – Pagan Holidays Added to Excused Absences, November 1, 2007

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 5:40 am and is filed under Off Topic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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