Right now, a militant Islamic group in Iraq is holding two French journalists hostage,… Right now, a militant Islamic group in Iraq is holding two French journalists hostage, attempting to bully the French government into repealing a law banning all conspicuous religious symbols from schools.

The group has held these hostages since Aug. 20, and although there have been talks within the past week, there have been no moves to release the hostages, according to the International Herald Tribune. The group’s brand of violent opposition is appalling — it mandates choosing between the law’s repeal and the possible execution of two innocent men.

Also, the group’s logic seems off the mark — the law isn’t only prejudicial against Muslims, as Jewish yarmulkes and Christian crosses are also banned. The only thing I could possibly agree with regarding the whole situation is that the ban should not have been instated in the first place.

My opposition to the law is not a religious one; I’m as secular as they come. The ban, had it been instated in the United States while I was in school, would not have altered my dress or behavior.

Nor do I disagree with the fact that people’s preoccupation with each other’s differences and hostility between religions — not to mention races, genders, sexual orientations and socioeconomic statuses — are issues in desperate need of strong action to end them.

What bothers me about the law is its presumption that the only way to deal with each other’s differences is to deny that they exist. Sweeping things under the rug does not make them disappear. The French government seems so overwhelmed and so unsure of how to fix humanity’s eternal refusal to unify that it has abandoned the possibility of a more complicated and effective solution.

Even worse, this ban applies only in schools, places where kids should be educated about individual and group differences, and taught to interact with people unlike themselves so that they can function in the real world. Educated, France — not taught to hide from the truth.

It would take some sort of memory-suppressing drug to trick even the youngest kids into forgetting that their classmate who wore the headscarf last year is no longer Muslim, that the boy in the yarmulke is no longer Jewish, or that the girl who twirled her crucifix as she listened to a teacher’s lecture is no longer a Christian.

And when these children and teen-agers see each other outside of school where the ban does not apply — whether it’s at a place of worship or in the grocery store — are they expected to forget their knowledge when they step inside the classroom? Can prejudices be so easily abolished when evidence of differences is not in front of one’s face?

Of course not.

Making religious symbols illegal in school ignores the fact that most biases begin at home and should be corrected — not ignored — by public institutions to prevent prejudicial ideologies from continuing generation after generation. It is a daunting, frustrating task, but it is one that needs to be attempted. Children spend as much time at school as they do at home. Therefore, it is the perfect place to make the impression on young people that we are all different and that these differences must be accepted for society to function peacefully.

I fear the law will push more parents to place their children in private schools — a move that will deny many children the opportunity to interact daily with people of other cultures, and increase separation between different religious and socioeconomic groups. Such divisiveness often leads to greater conflict between groups because people will only know the unsubstantiated stereotypes they’ve been taught, not the truth about others.

France’s motives for enacting the ban are understandable, but wrong nonetheless. Similarly, the Islamic Army’s desire to protest is OK, but its protest methods are inhumane and much more wrong than the law itself. We do not need division or unrealistic — and impossible — ideals calling for the secularization of everything. What we need is to teach people to respect each other’s differences through education, example and experience. And what better group to begin such an experiment on than children?

Jen Dionisio hasn’t worn a conspicuous religious symbol since an embarrassing Madonna phase in kindergarten. E-mail her at [email protected].