Rebecca S. Green, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article entitled “Area Religion Class nets Suit.” The lawsuit concerns a program in Huntington County where elementary school kids are taken to a trailer outside of the school for religious instruction. The article doesn’t say, but the program is called “By the Book,” so my guess would be that this is Bible instruction. Kids who don’t want to (or whose parents don’t want them to) participate do not have to. Those kids stay in the classroom where they receive no school programming while the other kids are receiving the religious instruction.
To me, that last part is the key. The Supreme Court has determined that kids should be allowed to receive religious instruction off of school property during school hours if their parents want them to. In other words, as I understand it, parents who are really serious about religious instruction for their kids shouldn’t have to forgo religious education on account of mandatory attendance requirements. That’s all well and good, I suppose, for parents who are that dedicated to religion for their kids. However, stopping secular education for other kids in the public schools to accommodate these parents’ religious preferences strikes me as being beyond the pale.
The lawsuit also makes noises about school providing the religious trailer with electricity and school personnel escorting kids to the trailer, but those seem like side issues to me. The kids who are left behind shouldn’t have their instruction time reduced or their school day extended to accommodate religious instruction.
It wouldn’t matter to the federal Constitutional claim, but I wonder if IC 20-30-6-10 through 12 impose some restrictions that are not being observed by the school. Among other things, it requires that any “voluntary religious observance” be in addition to the regular school day.
I remember Perry Township on the southside of Indy having a similar program back when I was in elementary school. My parents were pretty religious, and regularly took us to Sunday School etc. at our church, but they also were firm believers in separation of church & state & this program infuriated them. I vaguely remember sitting in a nearly empty classroom drawing pictures & so forth while most of my classmates went out to the trailers. Ridiculous. I think lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits got the township to drop the program but I can’t say for sure.
Really?! “….kids should be allowed to receive religious instruction off of school property during school hours if their parents want them to.” I don’t want anyone but me – and certainly not the school corporation – choosing the spiritual guidance my kids receive. You can only imagine the kind of fundamentalist christian crap the school administration would choose. Teach the educational basics needed to get along in the world – 3 Rs, history, lit, gym, art & music. Leave the values and religious beliefs to the family and its chosen church.
Yes, Glenn, I remember my daughter going through the same thing in grade school. I tried to explain it to her but all she knew was that most of the class was going on a field trip (to some baptist church) and she was being “left behind”. It is sick that the religious fundamentalists want to impose thier superstitions on these young innocents and we have to battle so hard to guide our own children in real spirituality before they are old enough to understand.
Do the Muslims and Catholics ( random choices of many possible)) also have their trailers?
My special peeve has long been that religion in the public domain always seems to mean evangelical type Protestant fundamentalism.This is actually teaching culture,just as school time to pray the rosary would be teaching Catholic cultural religion.
So we come full circle with separation of church and state the only constitutional path to protect us all from religion and simultaneously safeguard our constitutional right to worship in our faith as we choose.
Doug:
Check out Moore v. Met. Sch. Dist. of Perry, 2001 WL 243292 (S.D. Ind. 2001), in which Judge McKinney strikes down a trailer-religious ed. program in Perry Township, Marion County (probably the one Glenn recalls), which resembles this one. I would say the petitioners in Huntington have a good case.
Thanks for the post Barry. I thought I remembered hearing about a lawsuit but was too lazy to do the research myself! I’m dating myself, but can’t believe it took at least 25 years, probably longer, for an official challenge to that program.
If we’re going to teach the kiddies about god in school, then it kind of negates the need for churches, it seems. Maybe we could ship the kids to church for instruction in science, math, etc.
Undoubtedly, Doug, it will be only a matter of time until the usual group of evangelical Christion organizations will be protesting that again the “unelected activist judges” are being used to deprive them of their First Amendment rights. The-churches-as-victims syndrome never quite seems to go away.
Wow, this brings back memories of long ago when my two kids were offered this option in grade school. We opted “no, thank you,” as did most, but not all, families. It never occurred to me to ask what the decliners would be doing in the class room while waiting for the handful to return. Now I wonder how much educational time was lost. The very odd thing to me was the placement of the trailer. It was parked in the street at the curb exactly where the roadway narrowed again from accommodating a turn into the school driveway back to a two lane road. I could visualize a car ramming the back of the trailer. A number of us parents thought this looked very unsafe for the children who may have been inside, but I suppose it did meet the criteria of being technically not on school property. One year, when I was on the PTA Board, this came up and we voted to not approve the program (not able to remember why it was up to the PTA – probably the principal’s fake bow to parental involvement in school matters – or covering his behind where controversy was involved.) This was a shocking decision and one that was reversed for the following school year.
My kids are in this district and this annoys me. I am a christian, but I do not allow my kids to attend this joke. The trailer is parked on school property, I didn’t know about my propery tax paying for the utilities. My understanding is the kids “study” the Bible by watching “Veggie Tales.” My son, who is a 3rd grader either reads or can do computer work for the half hour they are in there. Of the 20 kids in his class I am the only parent who doesn’t allow my kid the release time. There are kids of all religious backgrounds. Good for this mom for being brave enough to state the obvious. I send my child to school to learn and he is learning at home and my church for things of the spirit.
That sounds reasonable to me. I’m not religious myself, but it seems that most who are have no real problem allowing for secular education at school and religious education at home and at the church of their choice.
Insisting on religious instruction at or around the public school always looks to me like a noxious subset of the religious community is trying to mark the public sphere as its territory.