Caroline Elizabeth Branch, Unexcused Absence: Why Public Schools in Religiously Plural Society Must Save a Seat for Religion in the Curriculum

• Citation: Vol. 56 No. 5
• Publication year: 2007

COMMENTS

UNEXCUSED ABSENCE: WHY PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN RELIGIOUSLY PLURAL SOCIETY MUST SAVE A SEAT FOR RELIGION IN THE CURRICULUM

INTRODUCTION

Conventional wisdom counsels against introducing religion into dinner table conversation because it is a volatile subject about which no one ever seems to agree. Now picture a mandatory dinner hosted by the government, attended by America's children while their parents are elsewhere. This is the public school system. In this context, a discussion of religion triggers concerns not about manners, but about the U.S. Constitution. Yet, is a classroom not the appropriate place for students to develop a practical sense of the meaning and consequences of religious freedom-the very first guarantee of the First Amendment? At this time in history and in this nation, do school systems not have the obligation to provide an opportunity for their students to speak about religion?

As a Georgia federal district court observed in reviewing a case on the constitutionality of a school district's marking school science textbooks with stickers commenting on the theory of evolution, "the 'discussion' of religious theories is fraught with danger that the constitutionally impermissible

'teaching' of religious theories could result."¹This language suggests that a safer choice would be to leave religion out of public school curricula entirely. The greater risk, however, is that by expunging all religious subject matter from lesson plans, students determine that religious liberty is either unimportant or so difficult to manage in a vastly plural society that it is best to ignore it. Students and parents might also conclude that the federal and local governments are hostile to all faiths or prefer a particular sect.²

The United States is a society of myriad religious practices and perspectives, all of which are protected by a commitment to religious liberty that is as old as the nation. But in a religiously diverse society, religious freedom has never meant religious harmony. Collisions between different religious viewpoints are pervasive in courtrooms, Congress, and local communities. Because First Amendment protections do not restrict individuals to exercising their religious lives and convictions in private, the United States hosts all sorts of dialogues and debates among people with different concepts of faith. Given that as of 2001, approximately 81% of U.S. citizens described themselves as religious adherents,³it is almost impossible for citizens not to encounter religion on a daily basis. Communities are expected to discuss and even agree on policies that may implicate religious principles, such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, end-of-life issues, and same-sex marriage. Such conversations are a virtually unavoidable aspect of active political life in the United States. But how do religious perspectives shape public life and policy-and how should they, if at all?

This Comment does not purport to resolve these questions, which for the most part properly belong in the political process to be sorted out by the governed. Rather, this Comment argues that public schools should be preparing students to engage productively issues with religious dimensions in public policy debate so that they have the tools with which to work within communities of diverse religious interests to discern responses to difficult questions of public concern.

The religious diversity and density of the United States demands that public schools, in preparing students to be active American citizens, provide a space for young people to learn how religion plays a part in U.S. politics, policies, and public life in general. Public schools, which are tightly interrelated with federal, state, and local governments and funded by taxpayers, uniquely represent public priorities.⁴Ideally, public schools will model how an education system prepares young people to be adult Americans. Otherwise, students will come of age to vote, to run for public office, to sign up or be drafted to go to war, without understanding the dimensions of this country's fundamental commitment to religious liberty and the consequent reality of a religiously diverse community. A student who has learned only the words of the First Amendment without exploring the meaning and language of different religious traditions, how religion might initiate or contribute to public action, or how to encourage useful discussions of topics that tend to instigate religious arguments, may be intimidated by how powerful and multifaceted a force religion is in the United States. Such a student is ill-equipped to participate in a nation that values religious difference. As one professor has observed, "'God talk' at least as much as 'rights talk' is the way Americans speak."⁵Religion infuses American public life, and artificially shielding students from this fails not only the students, but also ultimately the nation that looks to its youth for its future governance.⁶

There is a more hopeful and helpful alternative: Public schools may choose to educate their students about religion. Part I of this Comment explores whether public schools can bring religious material into the classroom without violating the First Amendment. Part II looks to the democratic philosophy of political liberalism, which has been influential in the U.S. public school movement,⁷to explain why teaching about religion in a nondevotional academic setting is necessary in a religiously plural society, particularly one that encourages open religious expression. This Part discusses how, given that people are free to bring their ultimate religious beliefs into public policy debates, a community of diverse perspectives on religion can respectfully consider these convictions and yet avoid government establishment of religion.

Part III analyzes how, should a school choose to teach about religion, various curricula in subjects such as evolutionary biology, history, civics, and literature might satisfy or violate the federal Constitution.

In a nation in which the "freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much,"⁸students deserve the opportunity to consider how to engage productively in public and political life where citizens often differ in the things that matter most. This Comment explores why and how such an education belongs in public schools.

I. OPEN ENROLLMENT: THE LONGSTANDING TRADITION OF ADMITTING

RELIGION INTO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

This Part opens with a review of the historical and legal frameworks for the relationship between religion and public schools as a starting point for addressing controlled integration between the two. It is true that religion in U.S. public schools has a history of signifying devotional instruction in the

Protestant Christian tradition for all students.⁹However, this history includes a position of resistance to sectarian public education, one that has been validated by the Supreme Court's rejection of state-mandated devotional indoctrination as unconstitutional.¹⁰

The Court's view of the role of public schools in instilling national mores in young citizens is then presented. In its First Amendment jurisprudence, the Court has sought to exercise scrupulous care in addressing how school programs and policies reflect First Amendment religious freedoms because schools may well be the first place students encounter these freedoms in relationship to government. Finally, the discussion on Establishment Clause jurisprudence in the public school context shows that the Court has never moved to eliminate religion from schools. Even where the Court has relied heavily on the language of separation of church and state in keeping particular religious activities out of public schools, it has never suggested that religion has no acceptable place therein.¹¹Through shifts in establishment clause interpretation, the Court has clarified a variety of circumstances in which religion is appropriate in the public school classroom,¹²including teaching about religion in a nondevotional manner.¹³

A. History Class: Religious Public Schools and Resistance

Most nineteenth-century American public schools,¹⁴defined as publicly funded and operated schools open to all children in a particular geographic area,¹⁵were infused with some variation of Protestant teachings.¹⁶Religious practices such as reading the Bible and daily chapel¹⁷were integral to school life largely because many Americans considered Protestant worship practices¹⁸ and interpretations of the Bible to be the foundation of morality.¹⁹Protestant theologies of individual relationships with God dovetailed easily with democratic ideals of personal choice and unmediated power of the people, in particular contrast to hierarchical Catholicism.²⁰Protestant and Catholic

Christianity disagreed fundamentally on the nature and content of Christian teachings, and Catholic discomfort with the Protestant aspects of common schooling concluded in Catholic withdrawal to privately funded parochial schools.²¹The nineteenth-century fault line between Protestant and Catholic concepts of Christianity reveals that while a majority of U.S. citizens may have identified themselves as Christian, that majority has never shared a set of

Christian beliefs such that all Christians supported particular Christian teachings in schools. This fact calls into question contemporary colloquial references to the United States as a "country . . . founded on Christian beliefs and principles"²²as justification for state sponsoring of "Christian" activity.

Broad-based resistance to Protestantism, or any sectarian influence, in public schools grew out of the longstanding fear of governmental religious coercion that had been codified in the First Amendment and also from "changing conceptions regarding the American democratic society, . . . the functions of State-maintained education in such a society, and . . . the role therein of the free exercise of religion by the people."²³Even...