My belief is that there is no place in the classroom for putting forth the points of view of any religious denomination or ethnic group. That can be accomplished at home or in private schools, and I do not believe public taxpayer money should be used.
The encroachment of these groups on the public school system should concern us. It should especially concern us that there is no political party taking a stand about separation of the religious and the secular in education. So many things are readily accepted now.
From Rob Boston at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Crusade In The Classroom. Clashes Over Religion In Public Schools Plague Georgia And TexasThree recent developments bear watching. First off, in Texas, the state legislature may be on the verge of another go-round in the ever-popular “let’s-display-the-Ten-Commandments-in-the-public-schools” crusade.
..."Flynn’s comments expose his real motivation: He believes that displaying the Commandments might affect the morals of young people. That means his crusade is about religion, not patriotism. If Flynn wants to promote patriotism, he would do better to mandate that schools post the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (Another plus is that there’s only one version of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; there are three versions of the Ten Commandments.)
There is a growing problem with religion in charter schools.
The second problem is also from Texas. Some charter schools there are venturing into the religion business. The Dallas Morning News reports that 20 percent of the state’s charters have religious ties.
That means they get public money.
And third:
Finally, it looks like we’re going to need to keep a close eye on Georgia, where the new chief of staff of the state Education Department is a former staffer of TV Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice.
Joel Thornton is already off to a shaky start. On a personal blog, he bemoaned the lack of religion in public schools, writing, “We no longer have that moral center. Now, we find ourselves in a culture that not only does not believe, but actually mocks belief in one God. We have gone from the place where it is okay to make fun of belief in God in limited cases, like a Hollywood movie or a book. At the same time, it was not okay to make fun of the core beliefs that surrounded the belief in God.”
Here is more about Joel Thornton's writings from Maureen Downey at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Get Schooled. DOE chief of staff says too many school systems hostile to ChristiansFrom Thornton's blog:
Modern man is turning further and further from God. The public education system is beholden to the government. Governments around the world are moving further and further away from any foundation of Christian faith. This means that their school systems will, by design and involuntarily, move further from any foundation of Christian faith.
We first saw this in America with the debate over the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The original request by the evolutionists was to grant them equal access to the students on their theories. They turned equal access into access only for evolution. The system that now exists is one that denies any belief in God.
The fight that is accruing in courtrooms around the country is a battle to keep out the simple belief that maybe, just maybe, there is a creator of some type who moved the process of evolution along. Even this is unacceptable to evolutionists.
That "simple belief" has been taught in the home, science is taught in schools. There should be no conflict at all.
Graduates of schools begun by Pat Robertson, as well as the law graduates of Jerry Falwell's law collge...have had an impact on our government that is way out of line. I remember this article from 2007 which pointed out that
150 graduates of Pat Robertson's college served in the Bush administration.They have had too much of an influence. I have no idea of the number in this administration.
Dallas Morning News has an article about a charter school which is openly religious in its aspects and teachings.
Charter schools with ties to religious groups raise fears about state funds' useStudents at Duncanville's Advantage Academy follow biblical principles, talk openly about faith and receive guidance from a gregarious former pastor who still preaches when he speaks.
Advantage's state-funded campuses showcase the latest breed of charter schools, born from faith-based principles and taxpayer funds. More than 20 percent of Texas' charter schools have some kind of religious ties. That's the case for six of the seven approved this year, including ones in Frisco and Arlington.
..."Advantage Academy sits in two nondescript one-story buildings on the edge of Duncanville , next to a bank and a guarded office complex. Poster board covers the walls inside with stenciled letters that read "Character Counts." Reminders of the academy's seven pillars, including integrity, humility and authority, hang in classrooms next to pie charts and pictures of President Barack Obama.
Advantage markets its teaching of creationism and intelligent design. It offers a Bible class as an elective and encourages personal growth through hard work and "faith in God and country." On a recent morning, a dozen uniformed seventh-graders hunched over worksheets, turning fractions into decimals.
Allen Beck, the academy's founder and a former Assemblies of God pastor, hopes to instill morals and ethics in students as they learn to count and read. "America is in a battle between secularity and biblical thinking," he said. "I want to fuse the two together in a legal way."
They get taxpayer money, and they are teaching creationism and intelligent design.
The Ft. Worth Star Telegram has a write-up about the new push to get the 10 Commandments displayed in classrooms.
Republican Texas state representative files Ten Commandments billState Rep. Dan Flynn hopes to ensure that any Texas teacher who wants to can display the Ten Commandments in a classroom. Flynn, R-Van, in East Texas, recently filed a bill that says school board trustees may not stop copies of the commandments from being posted in "prominent" locations in classrooms. Calling it a "patriotic exercise," Flynn said the bill is geared to teach youths about history and principles.
..."Children are a captive audience," Masci said. "They have to be there a certain amount of time every day. They also don't fully have the capacity to understand what is necessarily a requirement and what is a gesture.
"If a teacher puts a Ten Commandments poster in the classroom, a child might say, 'This is something I need to learn and understand.'"
Masci said government institutions, such as schools, may acknowledge religion but cannot promote it. "We've been fighting about this for years," he said.
In the AU article Rob Boston makes further points. He says the AU will keep fighting on this separation of religion and schools. He also says the states should pay more attention to funding the schools instead of pushing religion on them.
And here’s the final irony: Both Texas and Georgia aren’t exactly showering money on public schools right now. In Georgia, limits on class sizes were lifted earlier this year. One dad reported 50 students in his child’s classes. Maybe the state’s education officials ought to deal with that rather than go on a religious crusade.
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