Chinese New Year celebration renews push to add more cultural, religious holidays to school calendar

[rug]

Lion dancers perform Friday during the Asian Lunar New Year Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival, in Roosevelt Park, in Manhatttan's Chinatown. The Lunar New Year this year marks the Year of the Horse on the Chinese calendar. Some Asian parents with children in the city's public schools opted to keep their children home from classes Friday so that they could observe the holiday with family, sparking a renewed call to add more holidays for cultural and religious observances to the public school calendar. (Associated Press/Richard Drew)

By Diane C. Lore/Staten Island Advance
on January 31, 2014 at 7:30 PM, updated February 01, 2014 at 12:49 AM

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The celebration of the Asian Lunar New Year has renewed a call among state and city legislators to close public schools for the holiday, and possibly other religious and cultural observances, so that students and parents would not need to choose between celebrating their cultural and religious traditions or losing a day of instruction.

The push comes as many parents in heavily-Asian communities such as Manhattan's Chinatown and parts of Queens opted to keep their children home from school Friday, to celebrate the Lunar Year of the Horse. The first day of the celebration is usually spent visiting family members and feasting on traditional foods.

Advocates have been pushing for the city to close schools in observance of Chinese New Year and on major Muslim feast days, but faced strong opposition from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg who feared that to do so would open the door to a flood of similar requests from other cultural, religious and ethnic groups among the city's diverse population.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have been supportive of the idea, with the Council speaker saying she would introduce a resolution in support of adding more holidays to the calendar. "The way we build understanding is by really respecting culture," Mark-Viverito said.

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/01/chinese_new_year_celebration_r.html

[okasha]

1. Good for them.

They can take up the slack by shortening the break between fall and spring semesters.

[msongs]

2. how about not closing any schools FOR religious holidays. keep religion at home where it belongs nt

[rug]

3. How about Presidents' Day, Memorial Day or Veterans' Day?

[pangaia]

4. The Chinese New Year, as practiced. is not really so much a 'religious' event.

Last edited Sat Feb 1, 2014, 09:01 PM - Edit history (1)

Well, a little, but is mostly a time to remember ancestors, visit family, and, most important of all EAT!!!!!

[kwassa]

5. I ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant on Thursday.

Next to me was a party of 14 Chinese (assumption because they looked Chinese and were speaking Chinese, loudly) basically having a great time. At the end of the lunch they got up and said their only English words of the meal: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year of the Horse.

[pangaia]

6. My wife is Chinese.

I have spent Chinese New Years, or as the Chinese refer to it, Spring Festival, in Singapore, Hong Kong, Chungdu and Qingdao, where she is from.

The Chinese love of food is exemplified everywhere in China every day by big restaurants with BIG round tables, lots of family and friends eating LOTS of unbelievably delicious small 'dishes,' and LOTS of talk, laughing and beer. Sometime, often, actually, it can be so loud it is hard to hear people at your own table. It's wonderful !!!
MOON CAKES !!

BUT, trying to travel for Spring Festival can be, well, the Chinese version of living hell!

[Igel]

7. Easily done.

Schools have a district calendar, but have some "swap days" for local affairs.

If you have a hefty Chinese population--in the school, not just in the community--then you can swap one of those days for Chinese New Years. Jewish community? Yom Kippur, Rosh hashanah, etc., are on the menu. No point having Good Friday off if Good Friday is meaningless for you. Same for Xmas. Or MLK day.

If you're a small group, you get ignored. Which is what happens now, pretty much. That might lead to some arguments and skirmishes. Fewer than now, so we'd be ahead.

Keep "core" traditional US holidays unswappable. So Memorial, Labor, President's day. Even Thanksgiving Day's traditional enough--and has been re-imagined as being secularly "thankful" about stuff instead of to somebody--to be included.

You can't have all of them, no matter how much you actually dislike school. Then you'd have off for a holiday that 1-2% of the student body cares about, so it's nothing more than a sleep-in/good-off day that makes problems for parents who don't observe them. It also breaks up the school year too much--it's already broken up quite a bit as it is. Does no good for the students, excepts teaches them that all sorts of things are fine excuses for not learning.

Even having a solid block of time in the summer is a better idea than frittering away weeks and weeks by having one day off at a time. Kids can intern during the summer; work; do summer camps (whether Scouts or as one kid I know is doing, a law-school camp for high schoolers). Etc.

[MisterP]

8. just keep away Norman Tebbit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1253066/Norman-Tebbit-attacks-child-dressed-dragon-Chinese-New-Year.html