In my position as a noisy liberal Christian, I get exposed to a lot of the “you liberals are trying to lock God out of the schools” glurge that the religious right has been promulgating, generally with an example like the one that cjhoworth exemplified in her Pit thread Counter Christian Glurge.
But I keep running into some stories that are significantly less amenable to rejection on SOCAS grounds, and would like to take a typical one for analysis. (This one is purely hypothetical, manufactured from memories of a lot of similar stories over the past couple of years, BTW.) I’d love to see what civil libertarians and non-believers generally make of the rights issue involved and the question of whether the behavior described for each party is proper.
Specifically, the example (reconstructed from a bunch of similar stories) calls for a middle school class to have an assignment to prepare a short speech about who the student considers a hero and why. One student picks Jesus and prepares a short witness about how He died to save her (it’s always a girl who is the central figure in these sorts of stories). The teacher refuses to let her do this speech because it’s an illicit bringing of religion into the classroom, contrary to the First Amendment. To sweeten the pot, there are no specifications on who the students may pick; they’re being graded on their ability to make their case in oral presentation.
Is the kid out of line? Or is the teacher? And, in each case, why?
The fault here is with the teacher. The kid in question has a right to her own religion and a right to free speech. Conversely, the kid would have had to put up with an essay about how great Cthulhu is if another student had had the wish to write one. My attitude in this is a “live and let live” type.
As crafted in your example…the student is not out of line. The teacher is ignorant of the facts concerning the relationship between religion and schools. ,and unfortunately, I can very easily see something like that happening.
FWIW, the U.S Dept of education has a site outlining what is permissable and not permissable vis a vis religion in schools. (Main site appears to be down currently)
Also here
The teacher. The First Amendment doesn’t bar religion from the schools - it prevents state-sponsored religion in the schools. Students are free to express their religious beliefs and to pray - in fact, trying to prevent them from doing so would itself be a breach of freedom of religion, protected by the Frist Amendment (subject to “time, place and volume” policies - as on the SDMB, being religious does not entitle one to be a jerk about expressing one’s beliefs ).
So, the teacher is wrong in assuming that relgion and religious beliefs are barred from schools.
To compound the teacher’s error, the student’s presentation clearly fits within the parameters of the assignment. This student picked Jesus as her hero; someone else might pick someone equally controversial, like Clinton or Dubya or the Dalai Lama. So, the student has simply fulfilled her homework assignment properly.
Wherein witnessing may be defined as statements made from personal knowledge or beliefs, or expressions of personal convictions, what the teacher asked the students to do is close enough to witnessing as need be, and the teacher should have see it coming a mile away.
Just to clarify beagledave’s quote on the rules for religion in schools, where beagledave types that “Students may attempt to persuade peers about religious topics as they would any other topics, but schools should stop such speech,” a mistake is made…the rule should read that “Students may attempt to persuade peers about religious topics as they would any other topics, but schools should stop such speech that constitutes harassment.”
I just didn’t want anyone to get confused…carry on.
I don’t see a problem with the student’s speech either. The teach asked for a speech about whoever the student considered a hero. In the story line about Jesus, Christ believed that he was to die for others’ sins. Whether it works or not is irrelevant. The issue is that the hero of the story, Jesus, did die in the story because he believed he was doing the right thing.
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