Author: BONNA de la CRUZ
Publication: Tennessean.Com
Date: November 2, 2002
URL: http://www.tennessean.com/government/archives/02/11/24728762.shtml?Element_ID=24728762
Democrat Phil Bredesen said yesterday
that his Republican foe for governor was engaging in the politics of ''hate
and religious bigotry'' to win the closely contested race.
Bredesen publicly responded to a
mailing by the Tennessee Republican Party that criticizes him for promoting
a school curriculum as Nashville mayor that included discussion of Buddhism
and Hinduism.
The ad says he ''put in place a
core curriculum that mandated the teaching of Buddhism and Hinduism to
second graders. . Is this what we want our kids learning about in the second
grade?'' It ends, ''Tell him this core curriculum doesn't reflect our Tennessee
values.''
Speaking to the Nashville Kiwanis
Club, Bredesen said, ''I was prepared for almost anything, but this eleventh-hour
surprise is something that is a flat-out appeal to hate and bigotry.
''It is disgusting, and we are much
better than that. I think Van Hilleary, my opponent, needs to do some soul
searching as to what the values of he and his supporters really are. There
are values that are more important than winning an election,'' he said.
Craig Owensby, spokesman for Metro
schools, said he believed the ad was ''misleading'' about the curriculum,
adding that the two religions were discussed very briefly as part of a
lesson on India.
Bredesen said he believed the ad
was intended to send the message that he ''doesn't share the Christian
values'' of many Tennesseans and that it implied that children were being
indoctrinated in the religions.
Elizabeth Phillips, spokeswoman
for the Tennessee Republican Party, responded, ''I find it hard to believe
you can come up with that.''
She said fewer than 50,000 pieces
of mail were sent out - not the 400,000 that Democrats contend - to known
Republicans living outside Nashville.
The mailing simply makes the point
that core curriculum was not focused on the basics of reading, writing
and math, Phillips said.
''It's not about religion,'' she
said. ''If children were reading and writing at proficiency, I don't know
this would be as big an issue.''
Republicans say that school test
scores declined during Bredesen's tenure as mayor. Bredesen has said that
Republicans considered only scores above the second grade, but that, taken
as a whole, scores rose.
Phillips noted that Tennessee Democrats
had mailed out their own attacks against Hilleary.
Jennifer Coxe, spokeswoman for Hilleary,
said neither she nor Hilleary had seen the ad independently produced by
the Tennessee Republican Party.
''The more desperate (Bredesen's
campaign) becomes, the more they try to deflect attention from his record,''
Coxe said. ''He's an adult running for governor, and it's time he take
responsibility for his record and stop blaming everything on Van. It didn't
come from Van.''
Bredesen said he believed Hilleary
was involved but that there were other members of the Republican Party
''horrified'' by the mailing.
Bredesen told reporters the mailing
was ''way outside the bounds'' of traditional comparative ads with which
both he and Hilleary are flooding the airwaves.
The themes in the ad are echoed
in telephone calls to prospective voters, he said, as well as in an e-mail
sent to preachers by Brian Eastin, a former executive director for the
Tennessee Republican Party.
The mailing describes Metro's core
curriculum as ''radical'' and includes a picture of a cow, a Hindu religious
symbol, accompanied by the phrase ''Sacred Cows?'' It includes a Metro
schools Web site address that wasn't linking up yesterday.
Emily Stinson, social studies coordinator
for Metro public schools, said minor religions were no longer a part of
the second-grade curriculum.
Sixth-graders take a world cultures
class that includes ''awareness'' of religions, she said. The class teaches
about religious leaders, gods and sacred books of various religions but
does not promote the beliefs or tenets of any of them, she said.
Richard Land, president of the Southern
Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he opposed
such religions being taught to young children and believed it was never
appropriate at any grade level to mandate comparative religion classes.
''It's not the public schools' right
or responsibility or proper role to deal with religion in a required public
school class,'' Land said, adding that it is difficult, if not impossible,
to teach about religions objectively and that it puts teachers at risk
of offending students of various faiths.
Hedy Weinberg, executive director
of the Tennessee American Civil Liberties Union, noted the constitutional
protection guarding against endorsement of particular religions in schools.
''But it serves us all well as a
community to know about the diversity of religious beliefs out there and
certainly to be respectful and tolerant,'' she said.
''It seems clear to me the motivation
is to try to create some concerns in other religious communities that Bredesen
was promoting minority religious beliefs, and that's not what was happening.''
