I am happy to report that Valerie Strauss reposted my article on why public funds should go only to public schools, and she added a valuable introduction about the case that will soon come before the Supreme Court.
Last year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley. The case involves the appeal of a Lutheran church in Missouri and its preschool that had sought a grant from a state program to use scrap tires for a playground but was denied because of the 1875 provision in the state constitution — known as a Blaine Amendment — that forbids using any public money “directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination or religion.” The church and preschool sued the state, citing the First Amendment, but lost in a federal district court and a federal appellate court upheld the decision by the state.
Now the Supreme Court will hear the case, with arguments set to begin April 19, and the decision could determine the fate of Blaine Amendments across the country. The high court just returned to a full complement of justices, with President Trump successfully placing his first nominee, the conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, on the court to take the seat of Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch may well be the deciding vote in this case.
If the state is required to pay for the new playground, it would also be required to pay for a new roof and for any other expenses incurred by religious schools. You see where this is heading.
There won’t be more money for public schools, there will be less.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane!
Did you see what DeVos did to make America’s Banks great again?
Too bad the students have to pay for it – guess there’s no chance Mexico will help, huh?
________________________________
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Fabulous, Diane. This is good news.
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If there is such a thing as a separation of church and state, then why is Islam being taught in schools. Teachers are teaching these 5 Pillars of Islam in their classrooms and having the children bow to Allah.
Islam can not exist with our current political structure. Islam is a total separate political system in and of itself, engrossed with religion. School teachers, of which constitutes a vast majority, are women. These women are advocating the wearing of the burqa, abayah and the hijab. School teachers are setting the schools up as Madrassas in order to be more substantive to the Muslim population and it addresses the Muslim in the proper state of training children for the Caliphate.
Under Islam, women have no rights. Polygamy will be a concern for the Muslim, because it must overrun the Christian and the Jew. Women are subject to honor killings and no woman may and can file for divorce. A divorce is only found at the edge of a knife cutting the woman’s throat in an honor killing. Children are subject to honor killings and so are sisters by their brothers.
Islam also treats women as “mammals”, not just quite human. I would seriously consider your position I know many will poo-poo this posting, just be aware, every woman who has a high ranking position will be removed, or killed, but they will not be in charge anymore. Teachers will be surprised about what they will be teaching. Christians and Jews are from apes and swine. Gays are to be killed. These are just a few things and there is more. The next time people talk about separation of church and state as it concerns education, Islam cannot be separated from politics because politics are Islam.
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Lloyd, just more reason to teach about religion but not to teach religion as a belief system.
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Religion can not be separated from politics . Which is why we must keep all religions out of Government , especially schools. I don’t even see the need for teaching about the different fairy tales in schools. Your repugnant remarks can, have and still are applicable to all religions . Let me know when a women becomes Pope or Bishop or Priest. When a woman can touch a Hasidic Rabbi.
Or when a women becomes President of this protestant country. Because Pakistan had elected a women Almost 3 decades ago.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight .
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
I will leave out the citations, this obviously was never taught to you .
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“Teachers are teaching these 5 Pillars of Islam in their classrooms and having the children bow to Allah.”
Um, citation? Where is this happening?
Incidentally, most of what you right about Islam is bigoted ignorance. Sure, some support for that kind of stuff can be found in the Koran, but it can be found in the Bible too. Would you say the same things about Christianity?
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I lived in Saudi Arabia for one year. I have studied Islam for many years. You raise some interesting points.
Islam is being taught in schools, because the Supreme Court ruled in 1963, that it is permissible to teach about religion, and to teach the Holy Qu’Ran (and other religious texts), as literature. See Abingdon v. Schempp. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1962/142
If you know of a public school, where children are praying to Allah (or any other deity), I would like to know where.
Islam exists within our nation already. It is the third largest religion in the USA, and it is growing fast. There is a Mosque in my neighborhood. There is an Islamic Madras (school) in Fairfax county.
Under Islam, Women have some rights. It takes the testimony of two women, to oppose the testimony of a male in court. Women can inherit property in their own name. Islam permits the male to have up to four wives. A male can divorce his wife, by saying “I divorce thee” three times. A male can discipline (beat) his wife. After a divorce, the children are the property of the ex-husband’s family in perpetuity.
Islam provides a blessing on all “People of the Book” (Jews and Christians). Here is a Sadith (Saying), from the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)
“And argue not with the People of the Scripture unless it be in (a way) that is better, save with such of them as do wrong; and say: We believe in that which hath been revealed unto us and revealed unto you; our God and your God is One, and unto Him we surrender.” S. 29:46
I lived as a Christian (“Dhimmi” = unbeliever in Islam) in Saudi Arabia. I was always treated with respect and kindness.
I am teaching a class at my church, in Islamic literacy, so that people can have a better understanding of Islam and Muslims. Our nation has a splendid tradition of religious freedom, and tolerance.
“We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will surely perish as fools” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was once walking by the Mosque, and the muezzin was shouting the call to prayer. A kid asked me “what is that?”, and I answered, “It’s the sound of freedom”.
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Islam teaches some things about sexuality, which are much different from Western ideas. According to one account, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), said that gays “should be thrown from tremendous height then stoned.”
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.724908
Some Islamic countries, practice female genital mutilation, where the clitoris is amputated (by tying the girl to the ground and then taking a piece of glass or a tin-can lid, and cutting).
Islam commands that adultery is a capital crime, but it takes 4 independent male witnesses, or 8 independent female witnesses.
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The US Department of Education has been introducing Islam to schools, at least since the Bush administration in 2005. see
https://clarionproject.org/u-s-dept-of-education-promoting-islam-to-schoolchildren/
(I do not necessarily agree with this information, I present it here, for discussion only)
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I also am happy that your article was reposted, with Valarie’s introduction.
It is not surprising to me that the early “public” schools were protestant. This was not by any kind of law, but by the way the country was settled, at least beyond the eastern seaboard. My great grandfather was born in New Orleans just after the Civil War. His parents resettled to finally meet up with relatives who had settled in New York. Once they were all together, they moved to Indiana where a community of similar German immigrants had settled (not unlike the way Vietnamese and Hmong immigrants have made communities for themselves. After he finished his schooling (maybe equivalent to junior college, but deemed sufficient to lead congregations farther west who were calling for religious leadership — because they had come to America to have religious freedom, fleeing the 30-years war in Europe), he moved to Nebraska to serve protestants who had moved there for more land. Before long, these people wanted schools for their children, and since he was the only “educated” person in the community, he was asked to start a college to provide teachers and pastors for the growing protestant communities around the area. That college still exists, though they now have PhD professors and “real” degrees.
I once asked my aunt why her father was sent ‘back’ to Illinois to college, when his father had started a college in Nebraska. She said, “Well, it was really more like a high school…” But the teachers trained at the college served early schools in all the communities in the area — I’m sure some were not majority protestant, but the teachers had been trained in a certain way… Perhaps because people became more mobile they began to mix and discover how different (or similar) they were, so controversial things were left out of the schools. My mother-in-law had many stories about being one of the first from a protestant Dutch community to marry a man from the protestant German community 5 miles away… A hundred years has seen a lot of changes, and I don’t think we could go back even if we wanted to… The desire for education for our children is still a common good we should all work toward, whether we have the same religion or not. To set ourselves apart in enclaves does not serve the needs of our democracy.
Thank you for your article.
>
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Parents of public school kids really do have to start reading ed reformers.
Here’s the “debate” at a recent conference:
“In describing his ambitious proposal, which he detailed extensively in a recent paper, Smarick highlighted two problems in the traditional public system. First, he said, a “district monopoly” with little autonomy at the school level creates inflexibility to experiment. At the same time, charter schools, which are held accountable through contracts with an authorizing agency but are allowed choices through innovation, can be intrepid in testing new methods because students can still attend traditional district schools as a fallback if the charter schools fail.”
This is how this “movement” views your child’s public school- as a “fallback” for use when charter schools fail.
John King, the former Obama ed secretary, went along with this. This view of the public schools 90% of the kids in the country attend is apparently fine with him.
If you were wondering why public schools seem to fare so poorly under ed reform leadership at the state and federal level, read ed reformers. It’s not a mystery. Public schools are an afterthought- the schools designated as the disfavored “back up” to the “choice” schools they prefer.
These folks are in federal and state government, in a country where 90% of kids attend public schools, and they’ve designated public schools as something to be “wound down” and done away with. Is it really a big mystery why existing public schools lose funding and programming and quality every year? With friends like these, who needs enemies?
https://www.the74million.org/article/what-if-all-public-schools-had-an-authorizer-a-new-proposal-to-give-more-autonomy-for-more-accountability
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I live in MD and my kids attend the public schools that Smarick and Finn have appointed seats at MSDE. Fortunately our teacher’s union is strong and there are several legislators who were teachers or who are pro-public education. We are a mess of a school system. but at least we have some smart people able to fight education reform.
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I heard the Maryland governor on the radio yesterday. I do not understand your comment. You say the school system is a “mess”, but you have smart people fighting education reform. Is there some type of education reform, you prefer, and some you are opposed to?
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Charles,
What you call “reform,” others call privatization and incoherent uninformed intrusion by ignorant politicians.
Wise people fight that garbage.
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Even though I work in Montgomery County MD, I am NOT an expert on the public school systems in the Free State. Montgomery County has a reputation for excellent public schools.
As long as public schools are run by the public, and paid for by the public, their politicians will be “intruding”.
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“forbids using any public money “directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination or religion.””
I do not understand then how vouchers can be used in religious schools. And I do not understand how federal grants can be used at universities which are affiliated with some church. Here is a list of Methodist Universities (Duke, Emory, Brevard…)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Universities_and_colleges_affiliated_with_the_United_Methodist_Church
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The American taxpayer (you and me) are subsidizing religion, at the rate of $82.5 BILLION dollars per year,
see
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/22/you-give-religions-more-than-82-5-billion-a-year/?utm_term=.402136c0ad3d
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If Lloyd continues to make bigoted statements or insults me, he will be in moderation or blocked. (Not referring to Lloyd Lofthouse but the one who made nasty comments about Islam. Any more of that tripe will be deleted.)
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