The recent decision to teach the Bible in public schools in Oklahoma, serves as a reminder of religion’s important and widespread influence.
A well-rounded education must include religion from the start. Writing in “Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum,” Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes explain, “An elementary school curriculum that ignores religion gives students the false message that religion doesn’t matter to people — that we live in a religion-free world.”
“This is neither fair nor accurate,” the authors continue. “Silence about religion also denies students the promise of a good education. If they are to understand the world they live in, they must be exposed at an early age to the religious dimensions of society, history, literature, art and music. Without this foundation, they will be unprepared for the more complex and critical study of the upper grades.”
In July 1995, the Clinton administration issued a set of guidelines entitled, “Religious Expression in Public Schools.” (Later revised in 1998 to reflect the Supreme Court declaring the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional.) The guidelines addressed topics such as student prayer and religious discussion, graduation prayer and baccalaureates, student assignments, religious literature, and the teaching of values.
This may shock those who assume the Bible is forbidden inside the public-school classroom, a misconception likely due to widespread misunderstanding about the separation of church and state.
Historically, public schools in America not only tolerated but encouraged religious practice. Students were allowed to pray and read their Bibles. Generations of children read from the New England Primer, a textbook of prayers and questions and answers taken directly from scripture.
Public schools also used McGuffey’s Readers, compiled by Dr. William H. McGuffey. Essays addressed such topics as God, heaven and the spiritual dimension of people. None of these were a cause for constitutional concern. From their publication in 1836 until 1920, they sold more than 122 million copies.
So here we are almost 30 years after the release of the religious expression guidelines. Why then don’t we see more teaching of the Bible and religion in public schools today?
There are several reasons.
Religion is viewed as controversial by many who see it as only generating conflict between church and state. This often results in frivolous litigation and ill will.
In many instances, the religious expression guidelines never filtered down from administrators to educators, parents and students. Consequently, most remain unaware of their existence, let alone of the breadth of religious freedom the Constitution permits in the classroom.
Also, many educators stubbornly resist the idea of incorporating religion into the public school curriculum. They believe that teaching about religious beliefs in any serious way somehow implies intellectual weakness or the acceptance of superstition.
“The roots of the problem are largely philosophical, a matter of worldview. Educators have come to adopt the view that our intellectual disciplines must be scientific, or at least secular,” write Nord and Haynes.
It still remains largely parents’ responsibility to inculcate their children with a belief system, teaching them about God in the home. Moses told the Jewish people: “Drill them [God’s Laws] into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest” (Deuteronomy 6:7).
Nevertheless, if the public schools do nothing to teach religion or act openly hostile toward it, they are tearing down what is being built up in the home while painting a warped picture of the world.
Nord and Haynes conclude, “We teach students to think about the world in exclusively secular ways. This marginalizes religion intellectually. … The curriculum all but completely ignores religion as a live way of making sense of the world here and now.”
Students must be taught about a religious sense of the world here and now in which a living God is actively involved in the affairs of people. But this will never happen until educators are willing to accept the challenge.
Gregory J. Rummo, D.Min., M.S., M.B.A., is a lecturer of chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences at Palm Beach Atlantic University and an adjunct scholar at the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
