Religion s Role in Education: A Paper discussing the changing And yet enduring role religion plays In America s System of Public Education. Rebecca Flanders Spring 2005 Judaism, Christianity and Islam Professor Bowman 1
Two of the most important agents of socialization that introduce a young child to the culture he was born into are the public education system and organized religion. These two instruments of society are the source of much of what a child learns about the world around him in his early and most impressionable years, and will shape his convictions for the rest of his life. Yet how do these two pillars upon which much of our society is based, relate to each other? The United States of America has long struggled with properly defining this complex relationship. This nation was established with a notion of separation of church and state, yet almost paradoxically the majority of its citizens and policy makers (77%) are of the Christian faith (Satterfield, 2005). The attempt to reconcile the religious fervor of a nation that is overwhelmingly Christian with a strong commitment to neutrality of government run programs has been a part of America s past, continues to plague the present, and future education system. Although an attempt made in 1995 at addressing the controversy surrounding religion and the public school system in an open and direct manner, ambiguity still exists. The biggest controversies in recent years have surrounded the topic of the saying of the pledge of allegiance, school prayer, and the debate over the teaching of evolution in schools, a dispute that has been roaring since it first surfaced during the John Scopes Trial, or Monkey Trial in 1925 (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2005). In the current state of education today, it is a commonly held value that religion not be a part of a public education curriculum. It would seem, because the first Amendment of the U.S. Constitution established the principal of separation of church and state, that it has always been so. However, this ruling was not originally meant to apply to school settings and was only enforced in the educational realm once it was realized that enumerated powers in Amendment X applied to education as a governmental organization to be run by the state. Before this, the beginnings of 2
America s educational system not only included religion, the very foundation upon which it rested was religion. One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, helped establish early on what he called, The universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible. A law passed in Massachusetts in 1647 personified the feeling of that time. The law was known as the school law but also the Old deluder law. It stated that Satan s, or the Old deluder s, prime aim was to keep mankind ignorant of God s word thus it was the duty of educators to thwart his efforts by including the Bible as the primary textbook for school children (McDowell, 1995). Perhaps the most poignant contrast that can be made between the prevailing thoughts about religion s role in education and the role it had back then can be obtained by simply quoting George Washington who said regarding education, Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality [in schools] can be maintained without religion (McDowell, 1995). The religion that many of our founding fathers spoke of, however, was not the religion that many modern day Christians would recognize today. Many of the key players in the formation of our nation were Deists. Deism can be defined as, the belief that God has created the universe but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws. Deism thus rejects the supernatural aspects of religion, such as belief in revelation in the Bible, and stresses the importance of ethical conduct (Hirsch, Kett and Trefil, 2002). One of the most discussed examples of Deism is Thomas Jefferson, best known for authoring the Declaration of Independence and serving as the third president of the United States. Jefferson, like many of the founding fathers, was very much influenced by the European thinkers such as Rousseau and Voltaire that emerged from the period of enlightenment in the 18 th century. Jefferson thus, was intrigued by the ethical teachings of Jesus Christ, but rejected the notion of 3
miracles that the Bible attributed to him as human fabrications. Jefferson believed he could determine the man made elaborations from the sound moral doctrine it was polluting and thus took it upon himself to create his own Bible. He did so by actually cutting all references to Christ s divine miracles and pasting the remaining passages in a new book that he considered the true unadulterated Bible (Nettelhorst, 1992). Another famous example of Deism in early America is Thomas Paine, the writer who provided words of encouragement to the people fighting the revolution. His belief in reason alone can be witnessed in his statement, my mind is my own church (Nettelhorst, 1992). Because of America s vast influx of diverse immigrants through the past 200 years, the America we know today is not the America that the framers of our U.S. Constitution knew, or perhaps even could have imagined. Our country, by accepting and encouraging new arrivers to the continent we also have had to, though often reluctantly, come face to face with many different ideas and practices of religion. In order to maintain the principal that laid out in the Constitution of no Federally established religion, a gradual switch occurred in our educational systems that led to the strict separation of religion and school that we see today. Because individual educators and school districts are able to act with relative autonomy on a day to day basis, the actual legal boundary of separation of church and state can become a point of confusion in the public eye. There are, however, actually guidelines set by the National Department of Education. Leading up to the formation of these guidelines, a conference was held in 1995 during the Clinton presidency that brought together a number of people with varying opinions on the issue to discuss a reasonable set of rules. This conference resulted in the issuing of a statement of agreement. Later that year this statement of agreement was the basis for the Department of Education creating an official set of guidelines that were to be given to 4
every school superintendent in the nation (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2005). The guidelines are very specific yet rest upon basic principles. The general sentiment that fueled the guidelines can be summarized in the statement that Clinton s Department of Education secretary made in reference to the guidelines. He said, Public schools can neither foster religion nor preclude it (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2005). This meant that the student s right to express their own religion in the form of self organized prayer meetings or personal clothing could not be prohibited or encroached upon. Expression of religion however, was to be treated the same as any other private student interest which meant that it could not be performed at a time when regular instruction was occurring or in any other manner that would disrupt the normal school agenda. Another clear obligation that the guidelines established was that teachers, coaches, and all other school staff were not under any circumstances allowed to endorse religious activity or doctrine, nor may they coerce participation in religious activity (Riley, 2000). These well meaning guidelines were an important step in addressing the underlying confusion about religion s place in education, but it served as more of a general statement of intent and failed to address specific issues that were beginning to surface in our nation. One of the debates that the Department of Education s guidelines failed to resolve was whether or not it is constitutional to say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. The controversy that rages over the Pledge of Allegiance centers on two words: under God. However the Pledge it self, when originally written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy and James Upham to commemorate Columbus Day, did not mention the name of God at all (Baer, 1992). The pledge at this time enjoyed a great deal of popularity and its recitation was soon established as a regular part of the schedule in classrooms across America. The words under God were added at a time 5
of great national religious fervor, the Cold War. When these words were officially supplemented in 1954, the mention of God in the pledge was widely supported because of the great conformity of thought during that time period. Many of the nation s citizens saw the addition of God s name as important and distinctive in separating the United State s Pledge based on faith from the cold secular pledge of the Soviet Union. According to Baer, The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer (1992). As time has passed, and the character of our nation has changed, more and more people have been standing up against the saying of the pledge in public schools, claiming that it violates the first amendment precedent of separation of church and state. It has long been legal for students exempt themselves from the saying of the pledge. This principle was established in the 1943 Supreme Court case of West Virginia Board of Education v Barnette. Unfortunately educational administrators have not always followed this precedent. Recently this issue was brought to the national spotlight when a Jehovah s Witness boy refused to participate in the saying of the Pledge and was subsequently punished by his teacher and made to stand outside in the rain for 15 minutes (Hudson, 2005). Though the Supreme Court has repeatedly come down harsh on educational administrations that violate the Barnette precedent and continually defended the right to refuse to participate, for many this civil liberty is not enough. Numerous secular groups and groups that seek to defend the first amendment such as the American Civil Liberties Union, object to the saying of the pledge in the realm of public education, even if a student is allowed to object. One Supreme Court justice characterized this view when he stated, Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the Pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the Pledge (Hudson, 2005). Many would also only tolerate the saying of the pledge in 6
public schools under the condition that the words under God be removed. Positions such as these have faced a renewed opposition in our post September 11 society in which zealous fervor for God and country has become quite popular. It is likely that the debate over the pledge s place in our school system will not be solved in the near future. Until it is solved, however, the time honored principal of legal objection first conceived in the Barnette case still remains to reconcile this obviously religious creed with a nation that claims to guard its citizens from state established religion. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, prayer in public schools was not the hotly debated topic that it is today. In fact, until the mid 1800s, prayer was a well established and wholeheartedly accepted part of education. The first controversy surrounding this institution arose in 1830 when a great influx of immigrants from countries such as Ireland and Italy came to the country. Many of these immigrants were Catholic and strongly disapproved of the Protestant based prayer system who s foundation was the King James Version of the Bible. This disagreement manifested itself in surprisingly violent riots that resulted in deaths, the expulsion of Catholic students from schools and served to broaden the gap between Protestants and Catholics in the nation (American Civil Liberties Union, 1999). Despite this outbreak no legislation was enacted regarding the issue of school prayer until over a century later in the 1960 s when America became more religiously diverse as more non western immigrants came to the nation with Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist backgrounds. Resentment grew among non Christian groups at the obvious Christian bias in the public school system. This tension directly led to one of the most important court decisions in the history of education and religion s relationship: Engle v. Vitale. In this 1962 Supreme Court case it was decided that asking students to participate in organized prayer during school hours violated the establishment clause 7
of the first Amendment (American Civil Liberties Union, 1999). It is important to realize that the first Amendment does not prohibit prayer in schools but rather requires that the government remain neutral on the subject. Engle v. Vitale merely clarified that teachers, because they are technically considered government employees, cannot lead prayer in their classrooms, as that would not be exhibiting religious neutrality. Right wing conservative Christian groups are still lobbying for official school prayer as well as other concessions such as the posting in schools of the Ten Commandments; while Atheist led groups are calling for the complete eradication of any mention of God s name on school grounds. It is unlikely that either group will realize it s dreams as the majority of mainstream America shares the opinion of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who supports schools as neither religion free zones nor areas of religious socialization rather he states, "The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expressions are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State." Most people regard the findings of science to be reliable fact. But since Galileo first proposed that the earth was round, no other scientific theory has caused more of an outcry of opposition than that of Darwin s theory of evolution. The teaching of Evolution and it s partner concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest first butted heads with religion during the 1925 court case of Tennessee v. John Scopes, known to the public as the Scopes Monkey Trial (Linder, 2004). In this infamous case, a schoolteacher, John Scopes, was prosecuted by the state of Tennessee for teaching Darwin s theory of evolution, a theory that was outlawed in the state in favor of creationism. Although the court ruled in favor of the state, fining Scopes $100, the case caused serious and lasting damage to the credibility of teaching strictly creationism (Linder, 2004). Today, though nearly 80 years have passed since the famous case, the country still 8
wrestles with the question of what our children ought to be taught. Currently in all states the teaching of evolution is not only allowed, it is part of the state approved and mandated curriculum. The recent wave of post September 11 th, Christian Fundamentalism has sparked a renewed interest in teaching creationism alongside Darwin s theories. At the present, a total of 19 states are considering legislation that would weaken the authority of evolution in the science classroom. Tennessee, for example, is considering mandating a sticker on the cover of all textbooks containing evolution materials that would make it clear to students that evolution is still an unproven theory (Slevin, 2005). Many seeking change do not want the complete eradication of evolutionary theory but rather would like to see it taught along side with creationism and the theory of intelligent design. As William Harris, a professor at the University of Missouri and proponent of bringing the theory of intelligent design into classrooms, states, Our goal is not to remove evolution. Kids need to understand it, but they need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the data, how much of it is a guess, how much of it is extrapolation (Slevin, 2005). With numerous states currently sorting through legislation aimed at weakening evolution s credibility, it is very possible that in the future, science teachers will be teaching intelligent design and creationism alongside evolution. It is very difficult for man to learn how to compromise, especially on matters as close to his heart as his religious convictions. Though no man deserves to be forced into altering his beliefs, it is important to establish a society in which each man practices religious tolerance. The United States founding fathers were no strangers to the evils that run rampant when religion is intrinsically infused with government, thus they formed a government with the intent of avoiding this harmful marriage of church and state. This legal separation set forth in the First Amendment though well intentioned, is ambiguous at best and set the stage for debate of it s meaning in years 9
to come. There are many opinions as to the manner in which the separation of church and state ought to be carried out in regards to the public education system. The United States Department of Education has tried to clarify it s meaning yet failed to make any final resolution evidenced in the ongoing debates that still rage around the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in schools, and teaching evolution in the place of creationism. It is likely that these important issues will not be resolved any time in the near future nevertheless it is vital that each citizen takes note of the topics and speaks out for what he or she believes in for organized religion and the our country s educational system are vital influences on the lives of our children. And our children are our nation s future. 10