OPINION:
This month, officials in an Orlando, Florida, school district canceled a weekly high school video public address program called “Witchy Wednesday.”
Yes, it’s amazing that school officials allowed it in the first place.
Liberty Counsel, a national Christian legal group based in nearby Maitland, Florida, contacted West Orange Public Schools and asked the district to either allow airing of a biblical response or let Christian students opt out. On Sept. 23, the district canceled the program.
The inaugural “Witchy Wednesday,” which debuted in West Orange High School in Winter Garden on Sept. 10, went like this: A girl appears with a full moon backdrop, discussing moon cycles, burning incense and casting spells. She advises her fellow students to “write your intuition down on your paper. Fold it three times. Burn your paper into your white candle. Burn it completely and entirely to have your intention released into the universe. That itself is your ‘Light of Insight’ at work. You then cleanse the space around you once more to finalize your spell.”
She concludes with, “That’s all for today, Warriors. Have a wicked Wednesday.”
If that doesn’t give you the creeps, you aren’t paying attention to the upsurge in occult practices among teens and its corrosive effect on family life. Why listen to Mom or Dad when you can conjure a spell to get what you want?
Ever since public schools decades ago jettisoned Christianity in the name of tolerance, courts have established the principle of value neutrality. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that school officials in Orlando thought “Witchy Wednesday” was OK.
In a series of Supreme Court rulings, Christians, observant Jews and others have had to rely on claims of “viewpoint discrimination.”
The idea is to keep government instruction morally neutral. Christian and Jewish taxpayers, for example, don’t want to pay for Islamic schooling, but nature and schools abhor a vacuum, so somebody’s values will fill it.
In many cases, secular humanists have done so. Some schools even allow after-school Satan Clubs operated by the Satanic Temple to openly corrupt children. After all, Child Evangelism Fellowship has after-school Good News Clubs, and, well, all viewpoints are valued, aren’t they?
I call it the “equal time for evil” arrangement. The Satanists, who claim to be atheist materialists who don’t believe in the devil, seem far more interested in squelching any Christian outreach than in spreading their “faith” in nothing.
Child Evangelism Fellowship leaders appear confident going up against the Satan Clubs. They are probably right. Given the choice, would most parents hand their children over to self-centered Satanism, or would they want their children to learn that God loves them and wants them to love others? Still, did anyone ever think it would come to this? Satan Clubs?
Every day, in between the three R’s, millions of American schoolchildren in many schools are exposed to the hollow religion of secular humanism, climate hysteria, sexual anarchy, identity politics and socialist historical revisionism. For the particulars, check out the agenda at conferences held by the nation’s two largest teachers unions.
This stuff leaves less room for academics, which may be why the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that schoolchildren’s scores have reached new lows in math, reading and science.
Over the past few years, there has been a quiet exodus from government schools. From 3.7 million to 4.3 million school-age children, or about 7% of the 54 million school-age children, were homeschooled in the United States at various months in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey. Another 10% attend private schools, so about 17% in total are not in public systems, a trend that was supercharged by the COVID-19 emergency’s online schooling.
In a Pew Research Survey released on Feb. 20 of homeschooling parents, 75% cited concern over moral instruction as a prime motivator, followed by 72% who cited the quality of academics.
Regardless of the millions of hardworking, dedicated teachers around the country, incidents like “Witchy Wednesday” raise questions about who’s in charge. So do recent decisions by school boards in five Northern Virginia counties to ignore President Trump’s executive order to keep biologically male transgender students out of girls’ restrooms and girls’ sports teams.
It also hasn’t helped the case for public education that some teachers around the country are using social media to celebrate Charlie Kirk’s killing. If they share such twisted messages in easily accessible public forums, what are they telling children day after day?
To be fair, “Witchy Wednesday” might just be an oddity, the work of a couple of bad apples. Or it could be the tip of an iceberg.
Liberty Counsel reminded school officials in its letter that Christian students follow the Bible, which warns against witchcraft, occultism, astrology and worship of the sun, moon and stars. Thus, pushing this stuff onto Christian children violates their First Amendment rights.
The letter also includes this spiritual antidote. In John 8:12, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.