Peter Greene writes here about a case that could knock down the wall of separation between church and state.
With two Trump appointees, the Supreme Court appears poised to rule in favor of state support for religious school tuition.
Despite the fact that voters overwhelmingly reject vouchers (when the public is asked to voice its view). Despite the fact that studies consistently show that children who use vouchers lose ground. Despite the fact that many religious schools are openly discriminatory. This Supreme Court appears ready to give a green light to public funding of religious schools.
This is a huge step backwards. The state will fund yeshivas that do not teach English or science. It will fund fundamentalist Christian schools that use the Bible as a science textbook. It will fund madrassas. You can’t fund one religion without funding all.
Pandora’s Box is about to be opened.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Because, of course, we should turn our schools into fundamentalist Christian versions of maddrasas.
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You might be surprised, if you looked at the history of the urban schools in the east coast states. When there was a wave of immigration from predominately roman Catholic countries (Ireland, Italy, etc), the public schools in some of the cities, undertook to “protestantize” the immigrant children.
The children were taught the King James Bible, and a fundamentalist view of the Christian religion.
I remember going to public school in the early 1960s, and being commanded by the teachers to pray before we went to the lunchroom.
Christianity, the King James Bible, and school prayer have been part and parcel of American public schools for many years, until the Supreme Court stepped in.
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Charles, Those were great days for public schools. That’s when I went to the Houston public schools.
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Indeed. And this persisted. When I was working as a writer and editor for a textbook company in the 1990s, I was in a public high school in Georgia one morning where they started the day with a prayer.
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This is supposed to be a good thing, Chas? I come from a minority faith, and I don’t want my children to be beat over the head with someone else’s religion, and I don’t want my children to be told that they are not enough because they aren’t of the “right” faith.
That’s not what school is about.
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I am already looking for a good radical Islamist institution that preaches the sanctity of the imam so that my daughter can grow up hating those who differ from her. Failing that, maybe I can find a school that teaches that biblical literalism should guide her in the direction of hatred of those she does not understand. Or perhaps a more secular orientation that wants to engineer specific races out of existence.
I hope the vouchers will be close to the tuition of a prominent college prep program, otherwise we will have to send her to an underfunded public institution gutted of its highly motivated families who also want their children to get a God education. Most of those schools run between 20 and 40 thousand. If we quadruple public expenditure on education, we could have this vision. I will certainly vote for the politician who will quadruple my taxes so children can grow up separate from ideas that might contaminate their singular minded notions.
For the uninitiated who do not recognize sarcasm, I should be serious. We have been through theocracy in human history. Historian JB Bury intoned years ago that “a theologian on the throne is a public danger.” We have been through the opposite of theocracy, in which humans, or rather particular ones, are elevated to god status in the absence of religious practice. That looks pretty much the same as theocracy.
It seems to me we are stuck with democratic ideals and messy argument. Those other choices do not appeal to me. With the Supreme Court now becoming a one high school institution, it seems to me that it is time to clarify the constitution to save the idea of separation of church and state. That means an amendment. You cannot declare an amendment unconstitutional. I would suggest the wording go like this: “congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of …” Oh. Wait. We already have that.
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Where have you been since 2002? The Supreme Court ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, that providing financial support to families who enroll their children in religiously-operated schools, does NOT violate the constitutional prohibition against establishing a state religion. This has been settled constitutional law for 17 years.
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Wow settled for 17 years a good reason to flood the court. Since the 1970s the court has had a right wing majority while the right only won a majority in the popular vote a fraction of the time.
Time to unsettle some settled law. Starting with the revisionist settlements of the first and second amendments.
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I agree we need an amendment to clearly separate church from state. These right wing evangelicals are too powerful and intolerant. This whole fuzzy mixing of secular and religious is allowing right wing religious groups to impose their views on others.
While we are at it, we need an amendment that overturns Citizens United, and perhaps another prohibiting gerrymandering. The Supreme Court is of no use to us in its current state.
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Charles: Are you OK with your tax dollars supporting radical Islam? How about supporting conservative LDS who accept polygamy? Did Zelman really settle these issues? Or are you simply attempting argument by proximity?
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I am just fine with families receiving school vouchers, and enrolling their children in a Madrass. There are several here in Fairfax County VA. see
https://www.kaa-herndon.com/
and
http://www.alqalamus.org/
I have no problem with families enrolling their children in schools run by the Latter-Day saints. And then receiving public money to meet the costs.
Brigham Young is a fine institution. see
https://www.byu.edu/
The LDS church renounced polygamy many years ago. There are some “fundamentalist’ splinter groups which still practice polygamy. Polygamy is against the law in all states. I do not support law breakers.
I have no problem with families receiving assistance in meeting the costs of an accredited school operated by the Roman Catholics, nor the Baptists, nor the Methodists. None at all, and neither does the Supreme Court.
The Zelman case settled the fact that families using school vouchers to enroll their children in schools operated by religious groups, does not violate the establishment clause.
I am not attempting any argument. Just pointing out the facts.
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Charles,
Are you fine with yeshivas that teach in Yiddish, not Hebrew, and don’t teach science or English? Should they be publicly funded?
Are you fine with fundamentalist schools that use the Bible as their textbook for science and teach racism, sexism, and exclude LGBT?
You have no standards.
I’d hate to see you in charge of choosing engineers for buildings and bridges. Knowledge and professionalism don’t matter. All their buildings fall down.
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This is why I think the discussion about regulating charters may not matter that much. All of ed reform (now) works to promote vouchers to private schools. They won’t be able to regulate private schools in any meaningful way as far as public transparency and accountability for tax dollars. They can’t even compel private schools to accept students.
Even if they agreed to start regulating charters as public entities (which they never will) the goal is to fund thousands of private schools, too, and there’s really no way to reach them.
It’s an ideological movement that believes in deregulation. It’ll be a race to the bottom as far as that and private schools will be the floor. They’ll work to push public schools and charter schools to that floor, so none of the schools will be regulated. It’s a belief system.
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and the biggest problem is that it needs an aggressively well-informed ideological movement on the other side if there is to be any chance of taking back the reins: few, however, who take on the role of educational or political leadership in modern days seem to hold a deep ideology on this subject.
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It amazes me that there’s little or no discussion in ed reform about how many of them used to publicly proclaim they opposed vouchers and that just…disappeared and they all started marching lock step promoting vouchers, somewhere between 2010 and 2019.
It’s like they never said it. All those public pronouncements – poof! Disappeared.
How can one trust anything these people say? They don’t even recognize a huge policy shift they all quietly made. They just announce their new position. Oh, okay!
This was CLEARLY a politically motivated shift. They all started supporting vouchers because they needed the political support of the Right in order to advance the rest of the agenda. It’s horsetrading. What else will they trade away?
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Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education.
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To expose the hypocrisy of the court, it would seem that the issue should be attacked on 1st Amendment speech grounds vs Religious. Grounds similar to the logic in the Janus decision. Any tax dollars that I send to the government State or Federal, could then be used to support a religion. Religious schools are inherently religious as Unions are inherently political. In reality both statements are absolutely true. And actually if I remember correctly, taxation was an issue in the post colonial times. Taxation was the major issue in the Virginia General Assembly, leading to “The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” Taxation the equivalent of dues.
The framers actually did a terrible job of writing parts of the Constitution. It would seem that Madison assumed that future generations would rely on the intellectual arguments and sentiment of the day in interpreting that document. So we wind up with a sentence or fragments on issues like the Second Amendment or the Separation Clause. These issues were widely debated before those Sentences were inserted. But the Orientalists on the this court want to interpret the meaning of the words at the time without the arguments of the day. Actually it is all B.S. as they will bend the meaning to suit a political agenda every time.
So the answer would seem to be, to give the right just what they are asking for and stop withholding and paying taxes. Of course that might please the Koch Brothers and extreme right. But the center and the left has never been willing to burn it down to see where the chips land. The right has been willing to burn it down and it is always a hostage situation that they win. The ransom is always delivered.
How will we fund Public schools or any Public Good if we do not pay our taxes. Those taxes will then be diverted to Religious Schools. Perhaps lets see what happens when all the Public schools and services are shut down. When the civil servants refuse to report to work without pay. Who then will enforce the collection of taxes.
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Let’s see how the US raises an army without a supply of young people from the nation’s public schools. Public schools teach civic duty and responsibility. The only path left will be mass conscription, and we will probably have a lot more people claiming to be conscientious objectors.
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Thank whichever god you want but the military is not filling its recruitment goals. Maybe kids are realizing that civic duty and responsibility should not entail learning how to kill the other in other countries. To hell with the US military and its death and destruction machine. How you consider being a part of that as a civic duty is beyond my understanding.
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It truly disturbs me when I agree with you, Duane. Now I need to go drive a nail in my head to feel better.
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Originalists Spell check did me in again.
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I need to figure out how to become a religion. Since, by definition, I am already god I guess I could decree my sovereignty and enlighten the folks at the IRS to not mess with me or they will be instantly smitten. Hell, Joseph Smith managed to do it, as did Mary Baker Eddy as did L Ron Hubbard, although the IRS didn’t like him.
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Let me know what you come up with. I could join your church.
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It is not hard. Contact the Universal Life Church. see
https://www.themonastery.org/landing/get-ordained?keyword=universal%20life%20church&gclid=Cj0KCQjwgezoBRDNARIsAGzEfe65HuSPtw2Zw13YY7mdrniSfp2egb8rNRs-kNgO4gygYqzFAbzQc54aArEREALw_wcB
The church can get you ordained, and assist you in setting up your home as a religious institution. You can incorporate as a non-profit corporation.
Then you can get tax exemptions.
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You think anyone should be able to call themselves a religion, declare their home a church (no taxes), set up a school in their basement, and be funded by taxpayers.
Thanks, Joe Nathan, for setting this madness in motion.
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You are making some erroneous assumptions:
-I do support freedom of religion.
-If a person or a group wants to set up a new religion, they may do so (see the US constitution, 1st amendment)
-If a person/group wants to conduct religious services in their residence, they are free to do so.
-If a person/group wants to set up school in their residence/church building, they are free to do so. (See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1925)
-If a religiously-operated school, wishes to apply for public funds to operate, or obtain textbooks, or safety equipment, they may do so (See Trinity School District v. Pauley, 2017)
Have you got some problem with the US constitution, and the recent Supreme Court rulings on these matters?
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I have no problem with the US Constitution, Charles, whose founders feared state support of religion, which was common in Europe.
I have a problem with your eagerness to plunge our country into sectarian ignorance by miseducating children.
Religious education is the responsibility of the family, not the state.
If the rightwing religious hacks on the Supreme Court rule otherwise, I disagree with them.
As you well know, the Supreme Court has often ruled wrongly.
There is not a word in the Constitution supporting state funding for religious schools.
I support the US Constitution. You do not.
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Go to church in Europe, on Sunday, these days, and you will, in most places and at most times, find the church mostly empty. The United States is BY FAR the most religious country in the West, with a couple of exceptions. Why? Well, I think that the answer to that is that we have had this history of strict separation of church and state, of not allowing state support of any particular creed or denomination. A student of mine who is now in college studying theology told me, recently, that there were some 19,000 Protestant denomination. When people are free from government interference in religion, they found their own denomination and work out their own ways of worship–ones that they can be fervently committed to. So, the separation of church and state, in this country, has been a very good thing for religion–has helped it to flourish here.
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I Am an Idiot | Bob Shepherd
Yes.
I’m an idiot,
for I will rise
from my work
to watch raindrops
patter on a sidewalk
as though I’d never
seen them before,
as though these were
the first rain
on the first day
in freaking Eden.
I’m like the child
who never tires
of watching
Jack spring from the box,
who is surprised,
each time,
who squeals with delight,
each time,
as though
this were revelation
and he or she
hadn’t seen this,
already,
thousands of times.
Being an idiot,
I sometimes think
I could make a religion of this,
of this staring stupidly
at the rain,
for certainly,
one could (and people have)
made religions of worse.
I think I could probably
gather about me
a whole troupe
of “spiritual wives”
and we could
watch the rain together,
which would be fun,
for sure,
for a time,
but being an idiot,
I lack the will
for that,
or, perhaps,
the low cunning.
This is why,
I suppose,
gurus are gurus,
and I, I,
am just another
idiot.
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There WAS no IRS when Joseph Smith was alive. He died in 1844. And he never said he was a god.
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Joseph Smith says in The King Follett Sermon that God and Jesus both were men who lived at one time on an Earth and ascended by degrees to their exalted stations. He also claims that this is the path that the best of those among us will follow, and presumably, he included himself among those who would. So, while he did not claim to be a god, he definitely claimed a) that there were a plurality of gods, and b) that Mormon men were gods in the making. This is not an aspect of Mormon theology that the church cares much about having broadcast abroad these days, as it is making a concerted effort to appeal to people of traditional Christian faith.
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The Bible also warns of false prophets.
Matthew 7:15
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
100 Bible Verses about False Prophets
https://www.openbible.info/topics/false_prophets
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I ran across an amusing book not long ago, Lloyd–an annotated list of 3,000 predictions of the imminent end of the world made by Western prophets during the last two millennia. Lots of profit in the prophet biz, but in most cases, it doesn’t last long.
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How many times has one of those popular prophets predicted a specific date for “the end” and then there was no end unless that prophet’s followers took poison so they wouldn’t suffer when “the end” arrived?
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Most of them
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See, for example, the Millerites and the Seventh-Day Adventists
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cx: that there is a plurality
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I am not a fan of the military or most of their actions. Many young people believe they are serving their country by joining the military. Where I live, military service is often a “family business” that spans two or three generations. I am merely stating that public schools supply the military with most of its recruits. I do not believe a hodgepodge of splinter schools will do the same.
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Charles Wrangle was right. Bring back the draft. We eliminated it so that we could fight endless wars using mostly poor or working class people as cannon fodder.
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Charles Rangel I should try reading before I hit post LOL.
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(I am a veteran). The military draws its enlisted force from a variety of sources. Most specialties require at least a high school education or a GED. You need not be a graduate of a US school. I served with men from the Philippines, Haiti, Spain, the Dominican Republic,etc. As long as the individual can pass the aptitude test, and his/her educational background meets the minimum standard, then you are able to enlist. This is certainly a “hodgepodge”.
As to the officer corps: The service academies provide about 5% of the officers, and the remainder earn their commissions from ROTC, or Officer candidate school. Potential officers earn their undergraduate degrees from a variety of colleges/universities. The degree must be from an accredited college. So there is diversity in the officer ranks as well.
Since about 90% of American youth attend publicly-operated K-12 schools, it follows that about 90% of recruits attended public schools.
In the future, when families have more choices, the military will be drawing recruits from a wider diversity of schools. I do not see a problem.
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The vast majority of those who join the military are people who have failed in schools, have no civic education, mistake jingoism for civic virtue, and realize is they keep their heads low and follow orders that that they’ll get a comfortable pension after 20 years. Love of country and fidelity to the Constitution are unknown concepts to them.
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I disagree with “the majority that joins the military are people who have failed in schools.”
In fact, the opposite is true. If you dropped out of school and didn’t earn a GED, the odds are against you getting into the U.S. military.
“Today’s military: A well-educated force”
“The U.S. military is more educated than the population it serves, with most officers holding college degrees.”
http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/tanks-and-humvees-caps-and-gowns/
“What Are the Requirements to Join the US Military?”
For just the Army since each branch has different education requirements:
U.S. Army
“In addition to being a United States citizen or permanent resident alien, you must have a high school diploma or GED to join the Army as an enlisted member. You must also meet height, weight and overall physical health standards. The minimum score you can get on the ASVAB test is a 31. You have three hours to complete the test that covers science, math, electronics and reading comprehension.
“You can become a commissioned officer in the Army if you are a United States citizen. You must also generally be between the ages of 18 and 35 years, have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited postsecondary school and complete a 12-week training program to join through Officer Candidate School, or OCS. Furthermore, you can join the ROTC on a four-year scholarship if you are between 17 and 26 years old. The minimum high school GPA allowed is 2.5. You must score no lower than a 920 on your SAT and at least 19 on your ACT.” …
https://work.chron.com/requirements-join-military-10604.html
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…if they keep…
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Yes the hodgepodge of schools would end up supplying cannon fodder for the death and destruction machine as the poor have to go to school somewhere.
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Come on down to our “Race to the Top of Mount Zion Enrollment Jubilee” in the old K-Mart parking lot this Saturday and sign yore kids up for Bob Shepherd’s Real Good Florida School. You can use yore Florida State Scholarships to pay for it, and so it’s absolutely FREE!!!! No longer due you havta send yore children to them gobbermint schools run by Socialists whar they will be taut to be transgendered! We offer a complete curriculem, including
World HIS-tory (from Creation to Babylon to the Rapture)
Political Science (We thank you, Lord, for Donald Trump; the Second Amendmint; and protecting our Borders from invading hordes of rapists and murderers)
Anglish (the official language of the United States, and the language the Bible was written in)
Science (the six days of creation; how to make yore own buckshot; and how Cain and Abel survived among the dinosaurs)
Economics (when rich people get tax brakes, that makes you richer)
Art (making a Nativity Scene from Popsicle sticks)
And much, much more!!! Plus, you don’t havta worry yore hed about safety, cause all are teachers is locked and loaded!
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The U.S. Supreme Court might rule in favor of tearing down the wall that has separated religion from the government for almost three hundred years, but when, not if, the Democrats hold the majority in both Houses of Congress, what the court created can be legislated away and eventually, the court will be better balanced and might rule away what the Trump/GOP dominated Supreme Court did.
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