Religion's influence in the world is
pervasive. Even atheists will concede this fact. Therefore, a
well-rounded education must include religion from the start.
"An elementary school curriculum that ignores religion
gives students the false message that religion doesn't matter
to people - that we live in a religion-free world," write
Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes in their 1998 book,
"Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum."
"This is neither fair nor accurate. Silence about religion
also denies students the promise of a good education. If they
are to understand the world they live in, they must be exposed
at an early age to the religious dimensions of society, history,
literature, art, and music. Without this foundation, they will
be unprepared for the more complex and critical study of the
upper grades."
During his first term, President Clinton made clear that he
supported the teaching of religion in public schools. "Schools
do more than train children's minds. They also help to nurture
their souls by reinforcing the values they learn at home and in
their communities. I believe that one of the best ways we can
help our schools to do this is by supporting students' rights to
voluntarily practice their religious beliefs, including prayer
in schools," the president said. "For more than 200 years, the
First Amendment has protected our religious freedom and allowed
many faiths to flourish in our homes, in our work place and in
our schools."
Clinton directed his education secretary, Richard W. Reilly,
to provide every public school district in America with a
statement of principles addressing the extent to which religious
expression and activity are permitted.
These guidelines -titled "Religious Expression in Public
Schools" -were sent out in August 1995. (They were revised in
May 1998 to reflect the Supreme Court declaring the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional.)
The revised guidelines, posted on the Department of
Education's Web site, address topics such as student prayer and
religious discussion, graduation prayer and baccalaureates,
student assignments, religious literature, and the teaching of
values.
"Public schools ... may teach about religion, including the
Bible or other scripture: the history of religion, comparative
religion, the Bible (or other scripture) as literature, and the
role of religion in the history of the United States and other
countries."
This may shock those who assume the Bible is forbidden inside
the public school classroom, a misconception likely due to
widespread misunderstanding about the separation of church and
state. Public schools once not only tolerated but encouraged
prayer. Students were allowed to read their Bibles. Generations
of children read from the "New England Primer," a textbook of
prayers and questions and answers taken directly from the
Scriptures.
Public schools also used McGuffey's Readers, compiled by Dr.
William H. McGuffey. Essays such as "What I Live For" -which
addressed God, heaven, and the spiritual dimension of people
-were not a cause for constitutional concern. From their
publication in 1836 until 1920, they sold more than 122 million
copies.
So here we are almost seven years after the release of the
religious expression guidelines. Why then don't we see more
teaching of the Bible and religion in public schools today?
There are several reasons.
Religion is viewed as controversial by many who see it as
only generating conflict between church and state. This often
results in frivolous litigation and ill will.
In many instances, the religious expression guidelines never
filtered down from administrators to educators, parents, and
students. Consequently, most remain unaware of their existence,
let alone of the breadth of religious freedom the Constitution
permits in the classroom.
Also, many educators stubbornly resist the idea of
incorporating religion into the public school curriculum. They
believe that teaching about religious beliefs in any serious way
somehow implies intellectual weakness or the acceptance of
superstition.
"The roots of the problem are largely philosophical, a matter
of worldview. Educators have come to adopt the view that our
intellectual disciplines must be scientific, or at least
secular," write Nord and Haynes.
It still remains largely the parents' responsibility to
inculcate their children with a belief system, teaching them
about God in the home. Moses told the Jewish people: "You shall
teach [God's Laws] ... diligently to your children, and shall
talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the
way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:7).
Nevertheless, if the public schools do nothing to teach
religion or act openly hostile toward it, they are tearing down
what is being built up in the home while painting a warped
picture of the world.
Nord and Haynes conclude, "We teach students to think about
the world in exclusively secular ways. This marginalizes
religion intellectually. ... The curriculum all but completely
ignores religion as a live way of making sense of the world here
and now."
With the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel's decision
to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from public classrooms because
of the phrase "one Nation under God," we are left to wonder
about the freedom to teach religion in public schools.
Conventional wisdom says that the full 9th Circuit Court or the
U.S. Supreme Court eventually will overturn this wrong-headed
decision.
We can only hope so. Learning about a religious sense of the
world here and now -in which a living God is actively involved
in the affairs of people -would be an excellent lesson for
students in the public schools to master. But this will never
happen until educators are willing to accept the challenge.
n
Gregory Rummo is a business executive who belongs to
Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson. You may e-mail him
at TheRecordReligion@northjersey.com.
(You may e-mail him directly at GregoryJRummo@aol.com)
