Society & Culture... |
Bring your Bible to School? |
Conservative Review; by Niki Warren |
| While students are allowed
to take religious material into the classroom and read it during their free
time every day of the year per the U.S. Constitution, misunderstandings
and stigma over religion in the public often lead to the suppression of
adherents’ rights to free speech and free expression. We've been hearing from more students—and seeing news headlines reporting the same thing—who tell us they’ve been told they can’t engage in basic religious freedoms,” she continued, “like having a Bible on their desk or reading it during free time or even simply bowing their head to say a silent prayer before lunch.” Despite these fears and misconceptions, students and teachers actually have a great deal of leeway at their local public school. At a lecture held at the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council in August, Gateways to Better Education president Eric Buehrer listed seven specific ways that students and faculty can live out their faith, without running afoul of education officials. Students can pray or read the Bible or devotional during free reading time throughout the school day. This doesn’t mean that kids can opt to read scripture in lieu of a math textbook, but it does mean they can read, pray, and speak freely amongst themselves about their faith. Students can start and advertise religious clubs, which have equal access to the same sorts of resources and afforded the same level of respect as other, non-academic clubs, based on the Equal Access Act. Students can express their religious freedom in their homework and classwork. So if your child turns in an essay about his faith in God, the teacher should grade it using the same standards applied to any other assignment. Teachers can pray with other teachers and hold bible studies. While they cannot lead students in prayer, teachers may schedule the school's break room for prayerful fellowship and studying scripture. Students may also be eligible for religious release time, when they are allowed to leave campus for religious instruction without penalty. (Forty states have such laws.) Students can express their faith at school-sanctioned events. So if your child wants to sing a hymn for the school talent show, he is completely within his right to do so. Students can express their faith at a graduation ceremony. So efforts to sterilize these ceremonies of any mention of the theistic are not only unconstitutional, but they also go against proscribed federal government guidelines. If administrators get nervous, all they have to do is add a disclaimer to the event program stating that the religious expression is attributable to the student and not the school. “This generation of young people needs to understand and cherish religious liberty,” said Bueher during the lecture. “Let’s not just treat it as a part of a civics lesson. Let’s help students live it out in their world, which is the public school campus. |
