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NOREEN: Schools shouldn't push religion
You’ve seen the old bumper sticker: “As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in school.”
Nothing wrong with that, either, as long as public school teachers are not organizing the prayers; and one religion isn’t being held up above another, and no youngster is being harassed or being made to feel like an outcast for being different. What is acceptable and what crosses the line was the focus of a day-long symposium Saturday, sponsored by Citizens Project, the Colorado Springs-based nonprofit.
“Nowadays in our public schools, people of any faith or no faith should feel comfortable expressing their religious beliefs,” said local attorney Eric Hall, “and that’s a challenge, a big challenge.”
Hall took a group of 30 attendees through several federal appellate decisions, with one of the central lessons being “when a teacher is in a public school that teacher is wearing the government hat.”
Teacher leading students in a prayer at school? Not OK.
Teacher reading the Bible and discussing scripture in the teachers’ lounge? Fine.
Hall said the constant balancing (see my blog) act for the courts is to maintain citizens’ right to freedom of religion while ensuring that the government doesn’t act as a sponsor. That means public schools are not going to organize prayer meetings, but it also means “we’re not required to eradicate religion from the public square,” he said.
Plenty of people howled when Erica Corder was disciplined for departing from prepared remarks approved by Lewis-Palmer School District 38 administrators during her part of a commencement address in 2006. Corder was forced to apologize before she could receive her diploma.
She later sued, alleging her free speech rights had been violated. It’s a good thing she lost. Kids — even if they are valedictorians — shouldn’t ever get to make the rules.
Jes Raintree,CQ D-38 board president at the time and a presenter at the symposium, noted Corder’s father was a Focus on the Family employee. The speech was choreographed to trigger a lawsuit by the Liberty Counsel, which still encourages kids to talk up Jesus on graduation day.
It might be tempting for some to say that with its many strident religious groups, Colorado Springs is a place that especially needs religion-in-the-schools awareness. But as Hall’s list of appellate cases showed, keeping government and religion separate is a 24/7 job all across the country.
Citizens Project Director Barb Van Hoy said one goal behind the symposium is to help create community watchdogs.
“By educating teachers and school board members, they’ll know to do something when it arises,” she said.
And, no doubt, it will.
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