The best thing to happen to public schools was the elimination of school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1962 Engel v. Vitale decision that the New York Board of Regents violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause when it approved a nondenominational prayer to start the day in the state’s public schools. A year later, the Court ruled against compulsory Bible reading.
These decisions put an end to over a century of heated, occasionally fiery conflict (see nativist Bible riots of 1844), over which prayers and which version of the Bible belonged in public schools. While “best” is a bit of first-sentence hyperbole, the rulings were good for freedom of religion and for maintaining peaceful coexistence among differing worldviews. Combatants in today’s classroom culture wars should take a lesson from it.
In 1962, the Court majority understood that when school employees recite an official Christian prayer, even one as short and innocuous as the prayer in the Engel case, they violate the rights of students, staff, parents, and taxpayers who embrace other faith traditions or no religion at all, even if these individuals are in the minority. Those who resent the court’s decision would likely feel differently if a public school teacher began class with “Bismillah Al-Rahman Al-Raheem.”
As for students, they are free to pray silently on their own or with other students during non-instructional times. Schools may release students to receive religious instruction off campus with parental permission, but teachers may not provide religious instruction in the classroom.
If a school allows student clubs, students can form an afterschool Bible Club or a Hellfire Club (gratuitous Stranger Things reference) or any faith-based club. Staff members can wear a hijab, yarmulke, or a cross necklace but not a ‘Jesus Saves’ ball cap or ‘God Isn’t Real’ t-shirt. Students have more sartorial freedom to broadcast their opinions. They can share their faith, but adults cannot; they must be neutral with regard to religion.
Creating a neutral space in education is appealing to those of us wearied by today’s classroom culture wars. Differing views on sexuality, gender, identity, and politics pit parents, students, taxpayers, teachers, administrators, and school librarians against each other. What would it look like if public schools and the public called a truce?
Recently, parents and their advocates submitted a petition to El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen, imploring him to uphold obscenity laws against books in school libraries that contained graphic or sexually explicit passages and drawings. It seems like an odd place to lodge a complaint, but the petitioners felt their concerns had been dismissed at the school level.
I do not know these individuals or whether they approached district personnel respectfully, but they do have a point: Sexually explicit material has a deleterious effect on minors and doesn’t belong in school libraries. Many of the excerpted passages and images referenced in their petition are indeed explicit.
Adults have the right to read any book without government interference (child pornography excepted) and books including those some deem highly offensive should be available in public libraries. Libraries serving only minors, however, need to show discretion.
That doesn’t mean school libraries can’t contain age-appropriate books about human biology, the gay rights movement, secular and faith-based views on sexuality and gender, and classic and modern fiction with non-explicit sexual references. In Homer’s Odyssey, for example, when Odysseus hooks up with Circe, the author doesn’t provide a detailed step-by-step account like some of the books do that have been identified as inappropriate for school libraries.
This is but one example of parents, students, staff, and taxpayers who feel their concerns about sexualized or politicized material in public education settings are being ignored. They are expected to accept it in silence like students sitting captive through a daily invocation. I fear their alienation will prompt them to seek intervention from a higher authority, but unlike those who petitioned the Supreme Court in 1962, they will seek out a politician who promises to listen and act on their behalf.
Sometimes, creating an equitable space for conflicting worldviews means placing the Satanic Temple display alongside the crèche, the menorah, and Frosty the Snowman at the state capitol. And, sometimes, the best thing is to remove that which divides us.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer
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