RELIGION AND EDUCATION

The Impact of Religion on Teaching

Abstract

No questions have provoked as much discussion or prompted as much litigation during the past three decades in church-state relations as The Impact of Religion on Teaching and the use of public funds for religious schools. The issues raised by these two questions constitute a continuing dilemma in religion and education in America. This essay reviews religion and education in the context of U.S. churchstate relations and several decades of judicial interpretations based on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The most serious proposal for securing public funds for religious schools now being advanced is tuition tax-credit legislation, the outcome of which is by no means certain. Even here, however, the eligibility for such funds may require that church schools maintain an essentially secular character and thereby lose their religious identity and church-relatedness.

Introduction

The connection of religious identity to a teacher's professional self can be described in several ways. For many, the connection is incidental; religion and profession are compartmentalized in different parts of the teacher's life-space and have little to do with each other. At the other end of the spectrum are those who perceive that one's religious beliefs cannot be separated from their daily life and work. They are unable or unwilling to separate teaching from their religious identity, whether in the content of classroom work (where explicit connections are drawn and reinforced between religion-related ideas and ideals and content area topics in all school subjects, from math to science to history to language) or teaching style and method, or even how the room is decorated. This paper discusses the impact of religion on teaching.

Discussion

Religion and education form a continuing dilemma in American church-state relations. On the one hand, the role of religion in public schools has been adjudicated on the basis that public schools are necessarily subject to public control and public policy by virtue of the fact that they are tax supported and, therefore, must be governed by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment even if a given program of religion is maintained on a 'voluntary' basis. On the other hand, the use of public funds for religious schools has been repeatedly ruled as violative of the Establishment Clause since the use of such funds constitutes aid to religion and results in the entanglement of the institutions of church and state in a program of education. That the Court's most far-reaching decisions on church and state should have to do with the public schools has been noted as both historically appropriate and judicially significant.

The Rise of the Public School

The American public school is as historically unique as the American tradition of church and state. Together they represent two distinct contributions of the United States to the world. Founded as a secular state, the United States was the first nation in history constitutionally to prohibit the establishment of religion and to guarantee the free exercise of religion. While this view of church and state has been frequently referred to ...