BOOK REVIEWS: By Nathan Glazer Does God Belong in Public Schools? by KENT GREENAWALT Between Memory and Vision: The Case for Faith-Based Schooling by STEVEN C. VRYHOF
Does God Belong in Public Schools?
Between Memory and Vision: The Case for
Faith-Based Schooling
Reviewed by Nathan Glazer These are two very different books on the role of religion in schooling. Kent Greenawalt, university professor at the Columbia University School of Law, former deputy solicitor general of the United States, a distinguished constitutional lawyer, and a prolific author, has written a dense treatment of the law on religion and the public schools. He does not deal with private or religious schools, though on occasion he does note their existence as possible alternatives for aggrieved parties when this might affect constitutional reasoning on the legitimacy of one or another practice in public schools. For Professor Greenawalt, God definitely does not belong in public schools, certainly not the Christian God, though one detects in his constitutional reasoning a bit more license for other gods.
Our other author, Steven Vryhof, is a
“speaker, writer, consultant, and adjunct professor of
education at Calvin College” and an advocate of faith-based
schools. In particular, he supports schools connected to a more
orthodox and traditional offshoot of the Reformed Church, three of
which he describes in Between Memory and Vision. The three schools are in Holland, Michigan; in Bellevue,
Washington; and in Hoboken, New Jersey, and he compares them with the
nearest public schools. But Vryhof is not really concerned with public
schools, except to demonstrate the superiority, in cost and results, of
his faith-based establishments. On that score the arguments have been
familiar since James Coleman’s research on Catholic schools, and
they remain sound, in particular on the effect of functioning
communities around religious schools.
Vryhof’s brief accounts leave the reader
wanting to know more about the schools. They seem quite different
from the usual image of Christian schools, undoubtedly because of
the stronger intellectual tradition of Calvinism. For example, they
escape for the most part the dispiriting disputes over evolution
and biblical inerrancy. One wonders, though, how graduates of these
schools manage in our dominantly secularist colleges and
universities, or whether they simply avoid them.
Vryhof does review briefly the constitutional
position concerning public support for religious schools, but only
to demonstrate its irrationality (yes it’s constitutional for
books; no for maps; yes for some tests; no for preparation to take
tests; and so on).
Our Secular Religions
Reading these two books in sequence, I came
across a passage in Charles Glenn’s foreword to Between Memory and Vision that threw a sharp and revealing light on the subtle and
often mind-numbing distinctions elaborated in Does God Belong in Public Schools? Glenn writes: “The effect of Supreme Court
decisions over the past forty years was to treat religion as the only forbidden
motivation for school choice.” Let us extend that comment to read
“religion as the only forbidden motivation for any school
practice.”
One may legitimately have school rules and
practices for all sorts of purposes: to improve civic education and
public morality, to teach honesty, to prevent disorder, to reduce
unwed motherhood and sexually transmitted diseases, to avoid
litigation, to encourage empathy for tsunami victims, to strengthen
patriotism, and so on. But if the motivation in any way reflects
religious belief or commitment, the practice, perhaps otherwise
acceptable, falls under constitutional suspicion. An odd limitation
in the most religious country in the Western world, where almost
everyone believes in God, and greater numbers engage in weekly
religious observances than anywhere else.
We have been so educated by the sequence of
Supreme Court decisions on religion and schools that began in the
late 1940s that most of us would not be astonished at how odd this
is. But in studying Greenawalt’s detailed expositions and
analyses, we may perhaps still be open to some surprise. For
example, consider the case of Christian parents protesting
“secular humanism” in school readers. Their charge was
that the texts were in fact teaching religion, such as Secular Humanism and Satanism. Greenawalt tells
us that a decision by teachers to use one series of readers rather than
another in response to parents’ protests “would be
uncontroversial [constitutionally] if the parents’ reasons had
nothing to do with religion. But suppose the minority parents object to
the [controversial] series on religious grounds. I believe educators
are justified in finding acceptable common ground [with the parents],
so long as their judgments are not self-consciously based on their own
religious views.” And if they are based unconsciously on
religious views?
We are in a tangle on religion in the public
schools. Greenawalt’s main concern is to sort out the threads
so he can provide guidance to administrators and teachers (and
lawyers and judges) on how to stay within the constitutionally
determined limits on religion in public schools. He does try to
make some place for teaching about religion as against the
exaggerated fears of administrators and teachers, but it is a small
place. The way he limits what can be done may not reassure school
people that they can stay on the right side of the Constitution in
doing so.
The Highest Court Chips at the Wall of
Separation
The First Amendment does provide that
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion or the free exercise thereof,” but this did not
apply to the states (or to public schools as presumed organs of the
state) for the first 150 years of the Union. But beginning with the
passage of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War, the
provisions of the Bill of Rights were interpreted by the Supreme
Court over time to apply to the states, too. The first ruling of
significance on religion and the schools was in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing (N.J.) Township, in 1947. Everson posed the question whether states could
provide free transportation to students of nonprofit private
schools—specifically, parochial schools. The Court ruled 5 to
4 that busing could be provided, and so we are governed.
But the Court also unanimously adopted the
language of Justice Hugo Black in the same case: “The clause
[no establishment of religion] was intended to erect ‘a wall
of separation’ between church and state.” Greenawalt
notes, “This approach was dubious from a historical point of
view, given that the amendment actually protected existing state
establishments at the time from federal interference.” The
author believes that the overriding issue at the time of Everson was
Protestant and Jewish (and secularist) opposition to any assistance
to the struggling Catholic parochial schools.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, on
a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment, many states had passed
prohibitions, constitutional and legislative, against funds for
nonpublic schools, laws aimed at Catholic parochial schools. One
thinks back to Charles Glenn’s observation about the
“only forbidden motivation” and Greenawalt’s
point that conscious religious motives would make a teacher’s
selecting (or not selecting) school textbooks constitutionally
suspect. There was religious motivation involved, conscious more
than unconscious, in granting public aid to Catholic schools and in
denying it. How could it be otherwise in this religious country?
Conceivably, if the originalist justice
Antonin Scalia, is joined by others, the whole applecart may be
turned over, to return us to pre-Everson days, with matters in the hands of the states. But
no respectable constitutional authority would contemplate the
possibility. Greenawalt wants to effect sensible compromises. No to
creation science and intelligent design supplementing or replacing
evolution: it is too hard to hide the religious motivation there,
whatever the opponents of Darwinism say. Yes to the teaching about
religions, though the dangers there boggle the mind. No to personal
expressions of belief by teachers because they may influence
students, but much depends on age and sophistication. And so we
have guidance on many topics, sometimes so subtle one doubts a
teacher can really manage it. Choral music? “Courts …
will consider the director’s teaching style, including what
he says during rehearsals, the site of a concert and its time of
year, how selections are placed in a program, whether notes explain
the musical significance of works, and the extent to which
performance underscores aesthetic elements.” Well,
let’s drop the St. Matthew
Passion.
Nathan Glazer is professor of education and
sociology emeritus, Harvard University.
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