Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
GetReligion.org says that a recent Citizen-Times story about the varied educational choices in Asheville left out one important aspect — school with a religious influence.
A classic example of what we like to call a religion ghost is demonstrated in this story in the Asheville Citizen-Times. The article is a solid education piece on the wide variety of educational opportunities offered in the greater Asheville community. However, not a single word is devoted to religion, faith, or church involvement in the schools.
There are so many areas this article could have explored in terms of religion. And it is not as if the Citizen-Times doesn’t cover religion. The newspaper’s Web site indicates that they cover religion on a regular basis. The challenge here is finding the religion ghost on the education beat.
The final section of the article provides a “glossary of schools” in the Asheville area. The four categories are magnet schools, charter schools, “independent, nontraditional schools” and Montessori schools. The Asheville area does in fact have Christian schools, Catholic schools and plenty of other religiously-oriented schools. This list according to Google Maps is quite exhaustive.
Are these educational institutions included under the “independent, nontraditional” school category? Why weren’t they given any coverage in this article? Maybe they should have had their own category? Why should readers be assumed to know about the religious-affiliated schools in the area? One of the first things that comes to my mind when I think of non-publicly funded schools is religiously-affiliated schools. Why not the fine journalists at the Citizen-Times?
