Feliz Navidad!

With the holidays upon us it is interesting to see how Sotogrande International School approaches Christmas compared to schools in the states. Back home it is obvious that the separation of church and state is taken seriously and schools avoid anything that could be interpreted as promoting Christianity. This means that schools will have “winter festivals” and send “holiday greetings” but will conscientiously avoid decorating and talking in specifically christian ways. Schools general avoid teaching about any kind of religion in school just to be on the safe side. They leave that instruction to the parents and many students never get a good understanding of other religions or a non-biased idea of their own.

Our classroom "Thinking Tree". It has questions
 we have about Christmas and things we know.
 Around it is an  art project with fractions.

That approach is very different here at SIS. In P5 we are teaching a unit of inquiry on Festivals of Light, meaning various religious holidays around this time of year that have a significant element of light. We focused on Divali, Hanukkah, and yes, Christmas. This means we actually taught the Christmas story. It also gave us a chance to talk about where our Christmas traditions come from and the meaning behind various symbols. The teachers were confused when we mentioned that we would probably never teach this kind of content at home. They said that it is important to show the kids how all of the religions have common elements and ways of celebrating.

The main lobby of the school is all '
decorated for Christmas

It is also interesting how the school itself approaches Christmas. There are Christmas trees, garland, ornaments and other decorating filling the school entry way and many of the public spaces and common rooms around the school. The younger students are putting on a Christmas play about the nativity story, and there are a couple different Christmas festivals and Christmas bazaars. There is absolutely no attempt to be politically correct or to lessen the importance of Christmas in these celebrations. There are a couple reasons behind this. For one, Spain is a very Catholic country and there is not the concept of separation of church and state that we have in the states. It is not something the teachers and parents worry about or get offended over. There are a few students who come from backgrounds other than Christian, but they do not seem concerned about the proliferation of Christmas celebrations- it's accepted as part of the culture here.

Feliz Navidad!
Alyssa