How America Blew Its “School”

We have looked on quietly and passively as an edict has been heralded abroad in our land – “Your child is forthwith forbidden to hear the Bible read or to pray in public school.”

Now, if God exists (and doubt exists in the minds of a few only on whom the burden of proof rests and to whom the benefit of their doubt has been given), it would appear that the judiciary branch of our government has deleted a fundamental reality from the content of our children’s education. It seems that it is now theoretically possible for one to run the gamut of public secular education and never hear expressed, either in prayer or Bible reading, the truth that God has to do with human life and destiny. The exception to this possibility would, of course, be the academic reference to the fact that there are those people who believe in a God: pray to Him and listen to His teachings in a book they call the Bible. The clear implication here presents the validity of one of three understandings of this situation. First, those who formulate the content of public school curricula believe in God, the Bible and prayer, by and large, but do not admit the principle that education should embrace all aspects of knowledge. Second, those who are responsible for what children are taught, by implication, direct teaching and procedure, do not believe in God’s existence and His relevance to human life. The third possible understanding is that we have a situation in which an apparent minority has forced upon public education its will to empty it of any religious content; this being done through law.

The latter seems to be the most cogent explanation of a system in a country which was founded on belief in God, but has now seen fit, by default, to see this God barred from its classrooms and assemblies.

Some might quickly conclude that we are here involved in an oversimplification of a complex problem. There is the insistence that the public secular educational institutions of a pluralistic society, with their many understandings of God, must remain quite neutral in matters of religion. The state is clearly forbidden, in the Constitution, to establish religion. Therefore, we the people of the land and the parents of the children involved, according to this position, have no choice but to completely secularize the content of knowledge which is imparted.

Now let us look at the matter more closely. This “complete secularization” is fostered as neutrality in religious matters. This claim is utterly false. Unbiased neutrality in the matter of believing in God, prayer and the Bible is not possible. To separate public education from worship and knowledge of God is to create a bias toward non-belief, atheism (which is rationally untenable because it presumes human omniscience) and agnosticism. We are saying, in effect, that if God does exist (and this is categorically denied by the few who have forced their will on the many) He is not important enough to the Context of public education and He is being denied as the “ground of knowledge.” If it is true that most Americans believe in God, as Jews or Christians, then we indeed have witnessed a frightening phenomenon. Those who believe the LEAST (the atheistic few) have denied those who believe the MOST the right to tell their children of God through the medium of public education.

It might appear that an important point has been missed. With several religious backgrounds being represented by the students in one classroom, how can a point of view be presented which will not deny one or the other (e.g. Judaic-Christian divergencies)? This is a problem. It does, however, lend itself to solution. There can be an accommodation of some tenets of both faiths as it used to be when Psalms were read and the Lord’s Prayer prayed. This, of course, was the case before we were “enlightened” by the minority which has taken this freedom and privilege away from our children in declaring that God doesn’t exist anyhow and religion is nonsense. Surely men who believe in God cannot brook an implied denial of His being in the context of this one vast mind molding institution, the public school?

Is the “I believe in God, the Bible and prayer” mentality of the forgotten majority just an illusion? Either it is, or we the majority are easily put down by the “few” who deny God and tell our children that their parents are quite mistaken.

We have reduced the public school scene to the “lowest” possible common denominator of consent. This seems to be embraced in our passive acceptance of God’s expendability (as if this were possible) in order not to offend those who are characterized by non-belief and denial of His existence.

Why should the will of the unbelieving minority prevail? I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer to this query.